«Тахиййат»: Сборник статей в честь Н. Н. Дьякова

m 178 n Ludmila Torlakova the contrast, knowing that only a real fool and a totally ignorant person out of touch with reality could not understand the differences. It requires no effort on the part of the listener to perceive the rhyme and rhythm of these idioms, and thus the images easily kindle intensity and a mixture of feelings such as disrespect, ridicule, annoyance, disdain, and haughtiness. The context will decide how much negative emotional evaluation there will be or in what sense these idioms can be used. The following two idioms are similar to (6–12) above as far as their im- ages are concerned. They deal again with not knowing common things about everyday life and conduct. The idiom (13) lā ya░rifu ṣ arfan wa-lā ░adlan — ig- norant (lit., knowing neither ṣ arf nor ░adl; original meaning obscure) is a structure with two negatives 1 . Semantically this idiom exploits the idea of “false” exhaustion of all possible things that an ordinary member of a com- munity should know 2 . Thus if a person lacks this knowledge he must be con- sidered stupid or ignorant. This image with its cognitive structure is directly built to express rational and emotional evaluation and to trigger reactions. Therefore both the qualifying function of the idiom and its expressiveness are significant. Idiom (14) lā ya░rifu min ░ayna tu░kalu l-katfu — stupid, ignorant (lit., not knowing where the shoulder [of a sheep] is to be eaten from) is an old one, since it is mentioned by al-Maydānī and because it is culturally resonant, expressing a kind of traditional knowledge obligatory for the peoples in the region 3 . The connotations triggered by the image are many-sided 4 . It is used to qualify a person not only as stupid or ignorant but also as socially clumsy, inexperienced, and incapable of handling certain situations. In such idioms as this it is possible to recognize more readily the interaction of the two frames of knowledge — the basic denominative frame of the action and the figurative one. What one should know is contrasted with the lack of this knowledge and a clear rational evaluation of strong disapproval and rejection is expressed. 1 This phraseological patternwith double negation is used for a cluster of synonymo-us phraseological units that represents a concept close to the concept of stupidity, that is “a per- son good for nothing”, “not belonging anywhere”, “unimportant”. For example: lā fī l-░īri wa-lā fī l-nafīri — neither here nor there, unimportant, of no consequence (lit., not among the camels nor among the travelers [in a caravan]). 2 This type of idiom is quite common in other languages too and have been noted, for example, in Bulgarian, Russian, and German. See V. Vapordjiev, “Frazeologizmi s ni-ni v bulgarskiia, ruskiia i nemskiia ezik”, Supostavitelno ezikoznanie 5, no.6 (1980): 46–51. 3 It is interesting that the idea of a shoulder as a symbol is rather old in this part of the world and occurs several times in the Bible. For more details see V. D. Ushakov , Frazeolo- giia Korana. 4 The same image is used, for example, in other idioms such as mā hākadhā tu░kalu l-katf — That’s certainly not the way to do it! That’s no way to handle it! and ░allamahumin ░ayna tu░kalu l-katf — to teach a lesson.