DEATH OMENS IN THE SUPERSTITIONS OF THE ENGLISH, RUSSIAN, AND MARI LANGUAGES

Ekaterina E. Fliginskikh¹*, Galina N. Semenova², Svetlana L. Yakovleva³, Tatyana A. Mitrofanova^4
1Prof., Mari State University, Russia, katenasmile@mail.ru
²Full Prof., Chuvash State University, Russia, gncemenova@yandex.ru
³As.Prof., Mari State University, Russia, zavkaf1@gmail.com
⁴As.Prof., Mari State University, Russia, mitrofanowa.ta@gmail.com
*Corresponding author

Abstract

Death and funerals are the last rite of passage in the life of every human being. Despite the philosophical attitude to death on the part of the old people, this rite means the end of life in this world and passing away to the unknown, undiscovered world. These two factors became the reasons why there are a lot of superstitions playing the role of death omens. The authors of the article compare superstitions predicting death in three languages: English, Russian and Mari. All the superstitions were divided into two semantic fields depending on the predicting object and the subject of death. Among all predicting factors it was possible to distinguish lexical-semantic groups naming objects in the first group, and naming subjects in the second group. The first field includes such lexical-semantic groups as ‘Human body’ ‘Shoes, jewelry’, ‘House’, ‘Household appliances’, ‘Food’, Inanimate nature’, ‘Animals’, ‘Birds’, ‘Insects’, ‘Reptiles and fish’, ‘Plants’, ‘Religious symbols’, ‘Funerals’, ‘Pathway’, ‘Numerals’ The second field includes such lexical-semantic groups as ‘Subject of action’, ‘Close unknown people’, ‘Close definite people’, ‘Definite people’, ‘Unknown people in general’. The biggest lexical-semantic group is ‘Birds’. The research allowed distinguishing the universal and specific death omens for the three languages. Lexical-semantic groups Lexical-semantic group ‘Insects’ is specific for the English language. ‘Pathway’ and ‘Human body’ are specific for the Russian language. The universal death predicting omens for the three languages are cracking or sticking loaves of bread, disappearing or falling stars, howling dogs, birds flying into the house, black ravens, singing cuckoos, and sparrows.

Keywords: superstitions, death omens, rite of passage, the English language, the Russian language, the Mari language.