Семантиката на anima и animus во раниот латински јазик

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to describe the semantic properties of the lexemes anima and animus in Early Latin. The research is based on the corpus of literary texts which are commonly regarded as being paradigmatic for the study of Early Latin. The texts that form the main source of data are the plays of Plautus and Terence, but the writings of other authors, as Gnaeus Naevius, Quintus Ennius, Marcus Pacuvius, Caecilius Statius, Cato the Elder, Lucius Accius, Gaius Lucilius and Lucius Afranius, are taken into consideration as well. The lexeme anima in the chosen corpus is used to denote ‘breath’, ‘air’, ‘life’ and ‘soul’ as a life-giving principle or as an immaterial principle that leaves the body after the death. The lexeme animus, on the other hand, is not polysemous in the way that the lexeme anima is. The multiple meanings that can be found in dictionary entries for animus in our view do not stem from lexical ambiguity, but from the lack of an appropriate word in the target languages that would correctly express the meaning of the concept denoted by animus. The lexical gap is bridged by providing a list of conceptually similar words available in the target languages. The analysis suggests that in early Roman culture animus was conceptualized as a kind of an immaterial organ similar to the concepts of mind and soul in modern western cultures. This immaterial organ, according to Romans, was located in the human chest. It performed several functions associated with cognitive and affective functioning, a person’s volitional activity, his character traits and psychological states he experiences. The translation solutions we propose, such as ‘глава’ (/ɡlǎːʋa/, Eng. head), ‘ум’ (/um/, Eng. mind, reason, brains), ‘памет’ (/pâmeːt/, Eng. brains, mind), ‘разум’ (/râzuːm/, Eng. reason, mind), ‘душа’ (/dǔːʃa/, Eng. soul), ‘срце’ (/sr̩̂t͡se/, heart), ‘волја’ /ʋôʎa/, Eng. will, ‘желба’ (/ˈʒɛɫba/, wish) etc., are context and function-specific, that is, applicable for translation of only specific animus-utterances. As the analysis shows, even when the noun ‘душа’ (/dǔːʃa/) can be used as the only translation solution for both anima and animus, the concepts denoted by each of these Latin lexemes are completely different: anima is ‘душа’ exclusively as animating principle, i.e. as an immaterial principle of life which leaves the body after death, and animus is ‘душа’ as a wholeness of consciousness, emotions and character traits of the human.