Authors : Ekaterina E. Fliginskikh, Svetlana L. Yakovleva, Raisiya A. Kudryavtseva, Ksenia Yu. Badina and Svetlana S. Akeldina
Abstract: The objective of the study is to study superstitions with names of animals connected with rites of birth, wedding and death of three different languages: English, Russian and Mari. The research shows that superstitions containing names of fauna representatives are distributed as following: English 97 units, Russian 37 units and Mari 21 units. Superstitions devoted to rites of birth are presented by 12 units, wedding 51 units and death 88 units. In general 56 superstitions have positive meaning and 99 negative which is mostly connected with death prediction. The most popular animals are a dog (17 units in three languages) and a raven/crow (17 units in three languages as well), both revealing mostly negative meaning.
Ekaterina E. Fliginskikh, Svetlana L. Yakovleva, Raisiya A. Kudryavtseva, Ksenia Yu. Badina and Svetlana S. Akeldina, 2016. Linguistic Analysis of Fauna Images in the Ritual Superstitions of the English, Russian and Mari Languages. The Social Sciences, 11: 1634-1640.