Electronic Library of Scientific Literature


ASIAN AND AFRICAN STUDIES



Volume 6 / No. 1 / 1997


TREE ANATOMY AS A COGNITIVE MODEL

Viktor Krupa
Institute of Oriental and African Studies, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Klemensova 19, 813 64 Bratislava, Slovakia

The comparative study of lexical semantics reveals the existence of a variety of widespread conventionalized if not universal cognitive paths that contribute to a more or less loose structuring of vocabulary. The study of this structurating may shed light upon so-called naive or common sense linguistic thought. Knowledge of it would obviously make the understanding of relations between words in the lexicon easier.

pp. 3-8

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STRUCTURE AND ORIGIN OF THE KINSHIP TERMINOLOGY IN ROMA'S LANGUAGE

Svetislav Kostiæ
Institute of Indology, Faculty of Philosophy, Charles University, Celetná 20, 116 42 Prague 1, Czechia

Romani, a New Indo-Aryan language spoken about thousand years outside India, is a typical contact language; it has been shaped by the influence of genetically and typologically different languages. Many of its features are mixed (some of them inherited, others adopted) and appear on all language levels, but chiefly upon the lexical and semantic levels.

pp. 9-20

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EROTIC IMAGERY IN CLASSICAL ARABIC POETRY

Ladislav Drozdík
Institute of Oriental and African Studies, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Klemensova 19, 813 64 Bratislava, Slovakia

Woman's charm is an everlasting source of poetic inspiration. With the unlimited variety of its manifestations, it is a challenge to the pagan poet of the Arabian desert, as it is to the author of refined mystical odes. The small collection of terms, belonging to the lexical stock of erotic imagery, draws on exactly these two poles of the Arabic classical poetry.

pp. 21-44

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THE SONG OF SONGS (ŠIR HAŠŠIRIM) AND THE BOOK OF SONGS (SHIJING): AN ATTEMPT IN COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

For Professor Wu-chi Liu at his 90th birthday on July 22, 1997

Marián Gálik
Institute of Oriental and African Studies, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Klemensova 19, 813 64 Bratislava, Slovakia

The aim of this study is to analyse the lyric(al)ness of the two great specimens of the ancient and Chinese poetry Song of Songs and The Book of Songs. The different specificity of the lyricism is underscored in the poematis personae of two poetic works: more metaphoric language of the first and more synecdochic of the second, with attention to aesthetic sides of the depicted reality in first, and more restrained ethical values highlighted in the second. The first book is extrovertly and the second introvertly oriented. For both is typical the use of similes, although of different character.

pp. 45-75

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THE BURDEN OF CULTURE: GLIMPSES AT THE LITERARY RECEPTION OF NIETZSCHE IN CHINA

Raoul David Findeisen
Sinologisches Seminar der Universität Zürich, Zürichbergstr. 4, 8032 Zürich, Switzerland

The present paper briefly discusses the role Friedrich Nietzsche's (1844-1900) thought played for the Chinese writers Mao Dun [1] (1896-1981), Guo Moruo [2] (1892-1978), Lu Xun [2] (1881-1936), and Yu Dafu [4] (1895-1945) who, sociologically speaking and in Karl Mannheim's terms, all belonged to the same generation of intellectuals, commonly grouped under the label of "May Fourth". This means neither enjoyed specialized philosophical training according to Western models of academe, nor were they staying in the splendid isolation of traditional scholarly studies in China, but have absorbed some of Nietzsche's ideas and works as committed intellectuals with a strong sense for political practice.

pp. 76-91

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THE PARADIGM OF INHIBITED ACTION CONCERNING THE 20th CENTURY CHINESE THEATRE

Wolfgang Kubin
Sinologisches Seminar der Universität Bonn, Regina-Pacis-Weg 7, 53113 Bonn 1, Germany

The aim of this study is to point out to the tendency of modern Chinese drama towards Westernization and to a certain opposition to the traditional Chinese opera on one hand, and also to realization of the paradigm of inhibited action on the stage or to the inability of the protagonists to act which is typical of drama as a literary genre.

pp. 92-102

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THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF THE EARLY TURKS FROM POINT OF VIEW OF ZI.YA GÖKALP

Xénia Celnarová
Institute of Oriental and African Studies, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Klemensova 19, 813 64 Bratislava, Slovakia

The year 1996 was the 120th anniversary of the birth of Ziya Gökalp (1876-1924), the Turkish sociologist who stood in the beginning of the new Turkish nationalism. He was the main ideologist and spokesman of Turkism (Türkçülük) which replaced the ephemeral idea of Ottomanism with the idea of a united nation of Turks, bound together by a common ethnic origin, language, customs, culture and religion.

pp. 103-108

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