THE OPPOSITION OF LIGHT AND DARK: TO THE ISSUE ON THE UNIVERSALITY OF LINGUISTIC CONCEPTUALIZATION

Cognitive Linguistics, which explores the forms of knowledge representation and cognitive mechanisms via their language manifestation, enables a new approach to the study of binary oppositions. Despite the large number of studies devoted to the opposition of LIGHT–DARK a lot of issues are still unexplored. Many researchers have spoken of the universal nature of contrasting light and darkness. However, the universality of this opposition is usually postulated without clear definition of what it means. The analysis is based both on the data of the etymological and comprehensive dictionaries of the Ukrainian language, as well as on the results of the associative experiment incorporating Ukrainian speakers. The etymological dictionaries provide us with evidences of the tight semantic interrelation between the oppositions DAY–NIGHT, LIGHT–DARK, and vision in the languages of the Indo-European family. In the dictionaries of the modern Ukrainian language, we also find the confirmation of the above-mentioned connections. Moreover, the results of the associative experiment also confirm the relevance of these links for present Ukrainian speakers. As for LIGHT, the obtained responses clearly show the significance of the associations between light and day and the prototype source of light, i.e. the sun. The DARK, in turn, is associated with the organs of vision and complications or impossibility for visual perception. The responses also bring out the connection between darkness and night, evening, and, less often, morning. Thus, there are two main strategies for naming colours that can be implemented in different languages. The first strategy is directly related to the ability of visual perception, and therefore is universal or almost universal. The second one is based on the universal cognitive mechanism of comparison, the establishment of similarity, but the resulting ways of nomination strategy are linguistically and culturally specific, since they depend on chosen prototypical referents and / or environment typical for a particular culture.