The idea of "occurence" in Russian and Chinese Languages and Cultures

Golovanivskaya Mariya Konstantinovna Doctor of Philology Professor, Department of Regional Studies, Lomonosov Moscow State University; Faculty of Foreign Languages and Regional Studies 119991, Russia, Moscow, Leninskie Gory str., 1, p. 13 Golovanivskaya@gmail.com Other publications by this author

Efimenko Nikolai Aleksandrovich ORCID: 0000-0002-4003-5887 Student, Department of Regional Studies, Lomonosov Moscow State University 119991, Russia, Moscow, Leninskie Gory str., 1, p. 13 efimenko200205@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

The scientific research methods used in this work include the following methods: the comparative historical method, the method of generalization and the method of semantic analysis. These methods provide a systematic and in-depth study of the concept in different languages and cultures, and also allow to identify similarities and differences between them. The topic of this study is considered poorly studied and relevant. Up to this point, no linguocultural studies have been conducted that would analyze this concept in Russian and Chinese languages and cultures. This makes this work scientifically innovative and original. The results of this study will be of considerable importance, as they contribute to a deeper understanding between different peoples. It, in fact, creates a conceptual bridge that helps representatives of different cultures to better understand each other. In addition, the results obtained will be useful when reading training courses on regional studies and comparative study of cultures. They may also be in demand in the process of teaching relevant languages, as they will help students to understand semantic and cultural aspects in language and society more deeply. Thus, this study has wide practical and educational applications.

The opposition between necessity and chance is a key aspect in modern pan-European culture. Many thinkers, from Descartes to Leo Tolstoy, have discussed this aspect. Dictionaries associate randomness with external, nonessential and impermanent aspects of reality. Randomness is often considered as the result of the intersection of independent causal processes and events, which is a way of turning a possibility into reality. Under such conditions, there are several different options that can turn into real events, as indicated by the philosophical encyclopedic dictionary.

According to V. N. Toporov ^{[9, p. 56]}, the Russian concepts of fate and chance have a common ancestor, the traces of which can be traced back to the Proto-Slavic source. This ancestor (root) refers to the idea of synthetic movement, manifesting itself as a kind of "co-fall, co-in-fall" (with the prefix "cf.-century. lat. con-cado", which means "to fall, to fall out, together").

The Russian words "fate" and "chance" are very different in meaning, despite the common root. "Fate" in Russian is a kind of irrevocable sentence, and "chance" "walks by itself" its onset depends on its "desire".

"Chance" and "fate" are verb forms derived from different actions. This circumstance is the peculiarity of the Russian idea of these concepts.

 Russian concepts of "chance, chance, luck, failure, chance"

Vladimir Dahl defines a case as "an innocent and causeless beginning, which is believed by those who deny predestination," as well as "an unexpected, unpredictable and sudden event" ^[4]. He also reveals other meanings of the word, including 1) an agreement or engagement and 2) events or adventures that are recorded in the service list. Dahl also points to the existence of the verb "to happen" or "to happen", which means a connection in one place or a rapprochement (for example, "trouble happened" means that a person and trouble collided, connected). According to Dahl, the word "sluka" in an archaic context means love, friendship, affection and commitment. We see that for Russian culture, even in the last century, chance was perceived primarily as the union of a person with events, other people and circumstances.

In Slavic mythology there is no personified "Case", but in modern myth there is (see further compatibility).

In modern Russian, "case" means: 1) what happened or happened; 2) a favorable combination of circumstances that allows you to do something, a convenient and appropriate moment. It is surprising that the meaning proposed by Dahl, describing the "innocent and causeless principle in which people who reject predestination believe," is absent in modern dictionaries. Nevertheless, this third meaning exists and is confirmed by phraseology.

The word "case" has such compatibility:

His Majesty Chance, the game of chance, blind chance, bet, hope for chance, chance helped, prevented, saved, ruined, allowed to do something, introduced himself, fell out, turned up.

You can have a case, search, find, miss, miss, lose, wait, you can use it.

The case can be convenient, suitable, happy, unhappy, rare, etc.

So we see that in the Russian language "case" is represented as a person of high rank, actively interfering in events. This person is careless, but often effective – brings good luck to a person. The expression "accident" does not count here, it has acquired a special meaning in the Russian language, describing events that harm human health or even lead to death, that is, it is not an antonym for "happy accident." The phrase "this is a case" in the context of "you managed to avoid it - it's purely a case (accident)" sums up the successful outcome of the case.

Randomness is often seen as a result of the impact of chance, sometimes even as the case itself. Since it comes from chance, chance acquires many of its characteristics.

We use various expressions to describe randomness, such as "victim of randomness," "lucky accident," "unfortunate accident," "pure accident," "simple accident," "ridiculous accident," and "tragic accident." Chance and chance make up a pair of meanings that complement each other based on how they combine and contrast with each other.

We use phrases like "it's a matter of chance" and "only chance can help him." However, we do not say "a matter of chance," but rather assert that "only chance can save him." We rely on chance, but we don't trust chance. An accident can ruin a situation, but not an accident. In other words, when we talk about randomness, we often mean that its consequences manifest themselves immediately and are exhausted immediately. For example, an unfortunate accident can lead to the loss of a wallet, and a lucky accident can mean that a policeman does not notice a violation on the part of the driver. The case, on the other hand, suggests a deeper system of consequences. Chance can unite people, lead them to marriage, to unification. Although they may have met by chance, fate intervenes further. The actions of chance, unlike chance, usually do not have long-term consequences. When chance brings people together, they can interact at the moment, but this does not entail long-term consequences. And if such consequences arise, it is already considered a case.

For example, an accident may manifest itself in the fact that the driver who committed the violation did not receive a fine, because at that moment the policeman turned away. However, the detailed narration of this story transforms it into a case. That is why the case can be interesting, since "interest" arises due to the author's interpretation of the event presented by the narrator.

Thus, in the Russian language culture there is a hierarchy of uncontrolled circumstances: at the top of this hierarchy is "fate," which forms the general scenario of life; next in this hierarchy is "chance," which can affect a significant part of human life, and after it comes "chance," which affects the episode.

Where chance acts as a force with a sufficiently important scale of action, it is synonymous with chance, cf: "chance (chance) helped (helped) me to escape punishment. Chance saved you from a two – asked another. Chance saved you from meeting this bandit and saved your life. By pure chance, he survived – the bullet hit a tree."

Representation of the concept of "case" in Chinese

I. The token is a j?

All words that represent a good case in Chinese are associated with the lexeme j?. The hieroglyph ? j? is a hieroglyph of the phonetic category, consisting of parts ? m? and ? j?, where ? m? served as a key indicating the woodiness of the object, and ? j?, in addition to the phonetic function, had the meaning of "a sense of danger" ^{[16, p. 339]}. Thus, the original meaning of the hieroglyph "j?" was "the trigger mechanism of the crossbow" ^{[16, p. 524]}.

This representation, where the case is considered as a crossbow lock, shows the main feature of the Chinese idea of a good case. The case is the moment when the bolt of the crossbow is released and there are only two probabilities: to hit the target or miss. Also for the case: a person can catch it and use it, but can also miss it.

For a better understanding of the topic, we will turn to the linguoculturological method, conducting a semantic analysis of lexemes isolated from the "Frequency Dictionary of the Modern Chinese language" ^[10]. Examples of compatibility are mainly taken from various dictionary sources ^{[1],[13],[17],[18]}, and also from the corpus of modern and ancient Chinese ^[14], collected by the Center for Chinese Linguistics of Peking University.

With the help of the "Frequency Dictionary of the Modern Chinese Language", the lexical paradigm was identified: j?hu?, ? j j?y?, sh?j? and li?ngj? ^[10]. According to the data from the "Big Dictionary of the Chinese Language", the lexemes are absolute synonyms, since all have the meaning of "the right moment" ^[12]. Next, we will consider the compatibility of the lexeme, since it has the highest frequency of these three lexemes.

Here is a brief primer: cu?gu? j?hu? ‘to miss the event’, g?i j?hu? ‘give case’, f?ngq? j?hu? ‘to abandon the case’, zhu?zh? j?hu? ‘grab case’, zh?o j?hu? ‘find event’, ji? j?hu? ‘to take the case’, k?n j?hu? ‘to look at the case’, l?od?o j?hu? ‘to get the case’, zhu? j?hu? ‘to catch a case’, ch?n j?hu? ‘take a chance’, d?ng j?hu? ‘wait event’, y?u j?hu? ‘to have the case’, t?g?ng j?hu? ‘to provide case’, y?ji?n j?hu? ‘to find a case’, zh?w?ng j?hu? ‘in the case of hope’, cu?sh? j?hu? ‘lose case’, xi?d?o j?hu? ‘to sniff out case’, chu?ngz?o j?hu? ‘create case’, d?d?o j?hu? ‘to case’, j?y? j?hu? ‘give case’, l?ngf?i j?hu? ‘to squander case’, sh?q? j?hu? ‘lose case’, zh?ngq? j?hu? ‘generate event’, f?xi?n j?hu? ‘to detect the case’, k?nzh?n j?hu? ‘to see if’, l?y?ng j?hu? ‘use case’, x?nzh?o j?hu? ‘to find case’, zh?nx? j?hu? ‘treasure case’, sh?q? j?hu? ‘roll case’, b?w? j?hu? ‘to catch a case’, xu?nz? j?hu? ‘select case’, du?q? j?hu? ‘to capture the event’.

From the above compatibility, we see that the case appears to be clearly framed at the figurative level and has a number of significant connotations:

1. Hunting prey. When analyzing compatibility, the motive of hunting immediately catches the eye: a case can be met, examined, sought, expected and even sniffed out, and after its appearance it is necessary to grab and eventually grab the case. We see that all the main stages of hunting are also suitable for the process of chasing a case, where the case itself is shown as the prey of a difficult hunt. This representation in Chinese shows the basic nature of the concept: the role of a person is active, a good case appears suddenly, but before it appears, you need to prepare so as not to miss the moment. Chance is not a gift of fate, it is an honestly earned trophy.

2. Money. The case in Chinese has a subject association. A person can have it, can also lose it, it is clearly an expensive item, since a person values it, a person can generously distribute this item to others, can also occupy it, and at the right moment can seize power. The case is shown as an object that people are ready to get by any means, regardless of good and evil, and then use to realize their goals. Especially vividly this moment shows the compatibility with the verb l?od?o ‘to get’, which can also be combined with the lexeme y?ushui ‘profit’, which shows the direct connection of a good case with money in the Chinese worldview. You can also notice the motive of competition, which once again shows the value and importance of a positive case.

3. The idea. In Chinese, a case also has an association with the abstract concept of an idea: a person can look for it in his head, choose, be inspired by other people and eventually create it, also with poor implementation, a person can lose the case. The appearance of an idea is instantaneous, with the help of this process, a person gets the opportunity to increase the percentage of meeting with a good case to the point that makes randomness inevitable. There is a connection with the mind, it is thanks to the mental process that you can increase the chance of success.

li?ngj? stands for ‘good chance’, but on a rational scale, the degree of luck is clearly higher than that of other lexemes. If we analyze the chengyu, which include this lexeme, we can see the following examples: zu?sh? li?ngj? ‘to miss a chance’, t?ngsh? li?ngj? ‘to feel the pain of losing a chance’, ti?nc? li?ngj? 'a heaven-given chance’. Here chance is a divine gift from heaven, and when it is missed, we see a shade of suffering, pain and reproach.

So, we see that in the Chinese language picture of the world, a good case plays a very important role. To find out the reasons for the importance of the idea of a good case in the Chinese worldview, we will need to turn to Taoist philosophy.

The concept of j? is integral to the Taoist worldview. It is described as the basis of the existence of all things, as well as the reason for its change.

For a better understanding of this, we need to turn to the philosophical treatises of Chuang Zhou (369-286 BC) "Nanhua Zhenjing", where in the chapter "Supreme Joy" there is a story about how the philosopher Le Tzu reacted after seeing a human skeleton near the road: in his opinion, there are the smallest creatures called ? j?, they form ‘plankton’, then ‘moss’ is formed from them; and along such a chain, as a result, ‘a person appears who, after death, returns to nature again'. The philosopher ends this thought with the following phrase: "Everything that exists is born because of the j?, everything that exists dies because of the j?" ^[19]. Le tzu was not only able to describe the process of dialectics, but was also able to explain the natural cycle, where everything appears from microorganisms, but eventually ends with them. Thus, j? acts as a "singularity point", thanks to which even events with the smallest probability become logical.

II. The token ?ur?n

In Chinese, there is no definite noun denoting a neutral case. However, there is a lexeme ?ur?n, which can function both as an adjective and as an adverb with the meaning 'random/accidental', and after adding the noun suffix ? x?ng to it, it acquires the grammatical characteristic of the noun and then the lexeme ?ur?nx?ng will have the meaning "randomness".

In comparison with the lexeme ?ur?n, first used back in h?uh?n sh? "History of the Late Han Dynasty" [A Book about the Late Han], written in the V century AD, the lexeme ?ur?nx?ng began to be used only in modern Chinese as a philosophical term opposed to the lexeme b?r?nx?ng 'inevitability'. Thus, we see that the concept of a neutral case in Chinese is most often used to formalize a noun, and it cannot be used separately ^[15].

Next, we consider the compatibility of the token ?ur?n with verbs to identify more specific characteristics of the concept of the neutral case in the Chinese language: ?ur?n xi?ngq? ‘accidentally recall’, ?ur?n y?ji?n ‘to run’, ?ur?n xi?ngsh? ‘accidentally meet’, ?ur?n p?ng d?o ‘accidentally stumbling across’, ?ur?n x?ngw? ‘accidentally realize’, ?ur?n f?xi?n ‘accidentally discover’, ?ur?n t?ngd?o ‘overhear’, ?ur?n k?nd?o ‘accidentally see’, etc. According to this compatibility, it can be seen that only those verbs that denote instantaneous action, regardless of the nature of the event, can be combined with this adverb.

III. Lexeme y?w?i

To denote a bad case in Chinese, the lexeme y?w?i is used, consisting of two morphemes: ? y? and ? w?i.

The hieroglyph ? y? is a hieroglyph of an ideographic category, structurally consisting of a part of the ? x?n, denoting the heart, and ? y?n, denoting the voice, therefore, the initial meaning of the hieroglyph is ‘desire’ ^{[16, p. 925]}.

The hieroglyph ? w?i is a hieroglyph of the ideographic category. In the Jiaguwen script, the hieroglyph was isomorphic with the hieroglyph? b?, denoting ‘divination’; in the Jinwen script, the part ? x?, denoting night, was added to the right side of the hieroglyph, thus the hieroglyph began to have the meaning ‘divination at night’. However, in ancient China, divination took place only during the daytime, and night divination was an absolute exception and was possible only when urgent and unexpected events appeared ^{[11, pp. 172-173]}.

Thus, we see that the lexeme y?w?i means a sudden event that does not coincide with a person's desire.

Now I'll compatibility: f?sh?ng y?w?i ‘accident’, p?ngd?o y?w?i ‘stumble upon an accident’, y?d?o y?w?i ‘to deal with the accident’, y?w?i ch?xi?n ‘the emergence of unfortunate case’, b?mi?n y?w?i ‘to get around an accident’, y?w?i ji?ngl?n ‘accident coming’, t?f?ng y?w?i ‘beware of an accident’, z?och?ng y?w?i ‘to form accident’, f?ngzh? y?w?i ‘to prevent an accident’, ch? y?w?i ‘out on accident’, z?oy? y?w?i ‘to meet with an accident’, g?nd?o y?w?i ‘feel the surprise’ (this combination is the only one which analyzed the noun denotes a surprise, not a bad case).

From these phrases, we see a vivid objective image of an unfortunate case in the Chinese language – this is a villain who can harm a person. However, a meeting with such a despot is almost inevitable, because he goes to meet a person on the same road and a meeting with him does not depend on desire, but is forced. It can be prevented only with the help of intuition, having felt the danger before it was realized in a bad case, but if a person could not avoid this case in advance, it is better to try to get around after noticing.

Conclusions

1. In the Russian language, all words are different in their origin and, accordingly, historically distinguish various aspects in the study of the considered situation of a person – case. In Chinese, the etymology of words concerning good and bad cases should be considered separately, where for good cases there is an association with the trigger mechanism of a crossbow, which emphasizes the instantaneous origin of the action, and for a bad case, the scene of divination at night is described, which emphasizes the surprise of the event.

2. In Russian, the difference between chance and chance is ephemeral, in Chinese, the difference between j?hu?, ?ur?n and y?w?i is fundamental. This is also expressed in the different behavior of a person in relation to them in two language cultures: in Chinese, a person is active when he wants to catch a good case, and in a bad case, a person does not encounter him at will. However, when an indescribable luck comes to a person, he is also passive, since "heaven" gave it to a person, and not he himself achieved it. The difference between chance and chance in the two linguistic cultures is also expressed in the mutual specificity of concepts: chance is a small, often household, ?ur?n is a case associated with an instant memory of the past.

3. There are also significant differences in the luck – j?hu? pair. Russian luck is animated and active, Chinese luck is embodied and passive. The Chinese j?hu? appeared thanks to the philosophical ideas of Taoism, which emphasize the principle of change. Russian Russian luck, as well as specifically Russian maybe, in a special way reveal the interpretation of the idea of responsibility, more precisely, irresponsibility, coming from the idea of the non-secrecy of the world.

4. The holistic and figuratively developed concept of failure is specifically Russian. We associate its presence with the development of the topic of responsibility/irresponsibility: failure is the active subject that will be responsible for a person's mistakes. The Chinese concept of y?w?i describes events unexpected to a person, which are most often negative, which shows the Chinese fear of the unknown and a preference for avoiding it.

5. The Russian word, conventionally considered in this group, correlates with one of the meanings of the Chinese, which a person can operate with, but not manipulate.

6. The comparison of the real connotations of the words in question in the two languages allows us to see a common connotative motive – hunting. However, their assignment to the corresponding pairs of words does not match. Hunting in Russian is associated with good luck, in Chinese with the j?hu?, in the interpretation of which there is obviously a positive component combining three words.

7. In general, the lexical field under consideration in the Russian language distributes the negative and positive as follows: luck is "good", chance, chance, maybe - rather "good", randomness is different, failure is "bad". Thus, positive forces prevail over negative ones in this situation.

In Chinese – li?ngj? ‘very good', j?hu?, ? j j?y?, sh?j? – ‘good', ?ur?nx?ng - 'neutral', y?w?i - 'bad‘.

In Chinese, there are many more lexemes associated with a good case, which are also more often used. Thus, the picture of the world in this aspect in the Chinese mind is probably the most optimistic. And in the Russian mind it is more optimistic than in the French.

8. Optimism and pessimism, which we have just written about, are interpreted in fundamentally different ways in the languages we study.

The Chinese idea is connected with the Taoist perception: if you know everything in an infinitely changing world and be as ready as possible for this, then the opportunity to seize a moment of luck will be great. Russian optimism is associated with the belief in invisible accomplices hiding in the structure of the situation, hence the expressions "everything will work out", "it will work out", "somehow", "maybe you'll be lucky", "and suddenly it will."

The generalization of the obtained results can be presented as follows: