Isophrase ‘fresh water’ in the linguistic map of Europe

Abstract

The article introduces the concept of isophrase – isogloss, which shows the distribution of any combination on a linguistic map. The object of the research is the isophrase “fresh water”. The subject of the research is the ways of verbalizing this concept in the languages of the European area for an attempt the areal-typological distribution of languages. The article contains material on 32 European languages (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Sorbian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, Slovenian, Croatian, German, English Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Irish, Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Greek, Albanian, Turkish). The isophrase “fresh water” allows us to speak of three nominations for drinking water: Slavic (insipid – prěsnъ), Roman (sweet - dolce) and Germanic (fresh – fresca). The distribution area of the nomination is mapped of Europe. The material shows the semantic universal in languages, according to which ‘sweet’, ‘fresh’, ‘insipid’ are closely related. Fresh water is contrasted with stale (unclean), sweet – salty and insipid – tasty. Another interpretation is also possible: everything unsalted is fresh, and everything salted is canned, since sugar is also a natural preservative, everything fresh is opposed to salty and sweet. So 'insipid' has a semantic correlation with either salty or sour, entering into further semantic relations with their antonyms. The prospects of research may be related to the consideration of other names of water, acting, for example, as isophrases “mineral water”, “Cologne water” (cologne) and others.