CASES OF SPATIO-TEMPORAL ORIENTATION (ON THE MATERIAL OF LANGUAGES OF DIFFERENT TYPOLOGICAL AFFILIATION)

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify the features of spatial and temporal perception of the world by native speakers of the Udmurt and German languages by describing the semantic functions of spatial and temporal prepositions. The paper considers the functioning of prepositions in free word combinations, where each structural element has its own lexical meaning. It is noted that the case system of the Udmurt language is not frozen, once and for all given. It underwent many changes in its development before linguists came to a consensus. The developed system of cases of the Udmurt language contributes to the manifestation of a tendency to specialization, monosemization of forms, in contrast to homonymy and polysemy of case forms of the German language. As for the system of German cases, there is no fixed form that would express spatial relations. Moreover, there are no cases of spatio-temporal orientation expressing both the values of time and space, which are quite widespread in the Finno-Ugric languages. Udmurt and German are languages of different typological affiliation. Thus, each language type reflects a particular conceptual content in its own way. The Udmurt language, being agglutinative, uses synthetic means (suffixes and endings) to express the phenomena under study, while the German (analytical-synthetic language) is characterized by analytical means - articles and prepositions.