Zoonymic Images in Bicultural Childlore: Contrastive Aspect

Abstract

Childlore is a type of traditional folk creativity which finds its expression in the system of stable texts transmitted from one generation to another. These texts accumulate the peculiarities of the national conceptual picture of the world and the children's collective consciousness, reflecting the initial stages in the development of the national outlook. The article is focused on the contrastive analysis of the typical folk zoonymic images of CAT, RABBIT, and MOUSE, verbalized in the Anglophone and Ukrainian nursery rhymes. The zoonymic images are represented as a complex system of interrelated and interdependent meanings and functions analysed according to the suggested scheme. The differential features of the researched concepts of two languages are defined, grouped, and contrasted, the universal and national specific features are characterised.