Heaven and Earth

The present work is devoted to a comprehensive study of the concepts "sky"/"Himmel" and "earth"/"Erde" in the Russian and German language world pictures. The study includes a description of similarities, differences and the role of the concepts under consideration in the processes of cognition of the world, culture and everyday life of these communities, the analysis of related features of mentalities and determination of the reasons for the emergence of typical national perceptions. On the example of two languages evolutionary development of antonymic concepts is described, dynamics of formation of their modern semantic structure is revealed, system relations between separate parts of the language picture of the world are established, importance of concepts in the processes of cognition and estimation of human activity is determined. The book is addressed to graduate students and postgraduates specializing in the field of linguoculturology and cognitive science, the use of conclusions and results of the study is possible in the framework of teaching courses in cognitive linguistics, linguoculturology, word formation, special seminars on mythology and folklore.