摘要：This paper examines verbs used as parallel (synonymous) words in Estonian runo songs, the semantic structures which they reflect, and the possibilities of expressing special domains of action: motion, perception and speech acts. This is a research of Estonian semantics, based on the material which represents historical and poetic language, the age of which varies from the origin of runo songs about 2000 years ago, to the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, when the analyzed songs were written down. This material gives several possibilities to research diachronic semantics of Estonian, language with not very long literary tradition. On the other hand, in the poetic language the mental semantic structures appear more directly than in the general language, while the poetic text is further structured itself. The key poetical features determining the semantics of runo song language are alliteration and parallelism. The main unit of parallelism is a group of verses, each organized by alliteration, expressing the same or a similar situation by using the same, synonymous or analogous words which are usually in the same positions. The repetition of one idea with different words and the semantic cohesion in parallel verses may produce a result in which words that are normally non-synonymous come to be used as synonymous parallel words. Such a phenomenon has been explained as the hazing of the common word meaning: instead of words with appropriate meaning parallel verses contain words chosen for their matching sounds. My analysis indicates that there are still almost always some semantic motivation in the use of verbs in parallelism. The main units of the analysis - parallel verbs - may be defined as verbs that are used in parallel verses which describe a particular or similar action and are interchangeable with one other without impeding the meaning (although remaining connected with certain verses by virtue of alliteration and syllable structure). The main differences in the semantic structure of different action domains are those which arise due to the opposition between a human and a non-human element and the location of the language user in the environment described. In the case of motion, there is no qualitative difference between the human and non-human. Thus most of the peculiarities in that domain arise due to the speaker’s location in space: in parallelism the movements toward a deictic zero and away from it are differentiated as well as neutral motion. Motion may have a close connection to several (human) actions, thereby gaining an additional quality. Perception is a common ability among the humans and animals and here there are no qualitative differences. The nature of perception is determined by the qualities of the perceived object, and not the perceiver. But perception may also be described more generally. When there are no specific verbs for it, a superordinate concept is expressed by the subordinate verbs that are used in aggregate. The ability to speak is unique for humans, but one aspect of it - uttering sounds - humans share with the rest of the animal world. There is a qualitative difference between informative and non-informative sound and the speech acts can be divided into positive and negative. When a verb denoting a manner of speaking has a negative connotation, then the meaning of that manner will not be neutralized in parallelism as usually happens in the domains of motion and perception. The semantic analysis of parallel verbs indicates that parallelism as a poetic feature reflects clearly the structures of different semantic domains and categories, and also some older layers of the word meanings. As the verbs are more polysemous than the nominal words, in runo songs different domains of action are interweaved by several sense relations. The categories of runo song language as a sublanguage have some different boundaries than these of the general language, but the main structures of it still derive from the general language. The synonyms in the general language are mostly subordinate concepts of a basic level concept with a small difference of meaning. The runo song synonyms are basic level concepts themselves, their common concept belongs to upper level. In the use of parallel verbs there emerge several generic categories with no lexical equivalent and compound categories which open the inner structures of the concepts: the generalization is achieved without the abstract vocabulary. Besides the hierarchical relations of meaning, the selection of verbs into parallel verses is determined by the conventional relations between verbs and nouns as well as by sound associations, evoked by alliteration. Our language and thinking is structured by several associative networks - different semantic associations, polysemy nets, collocations, and also sound associations - such connections have been in the language and minds of our ancestors when they created and developed runo songs. The few cases when one can detect no semantic relationships between parallel verbs may be explained by changes in language and the weakening of the runo song tradition - as a rule, the choice of parallel words follows certain subliminal rules as the general use of language does.
关键词：Estonian language ; Estonian dialects ; interrelations between linguistics and folkloristics ; language history ; runo song ; semantics
