The concept 'mother' has a comparatively wide, multi-profile cognitive base in Hungarian that is appropriately reflected in its internal taxonomy, too. Several domains make up that base. For instance, in the domain of family, two profiles are distinguished: those of parent and wife. (A metaphorical extension of human family relations is the parent-female profile.) The next domain of the cognitive base is that of time, within which the lexeme mother accesses the profile of age; as well as the domains of sacrum and value. The linguistic image sketched in this paper transmits not only the traditionally fixed cultural pattern but it also takes present-day social realia into consideration as well. The image of mother in the Hungarian language is in general composed of positive associations. It has to be added, however, that the emotional relations concerning mother as described in this paper are less than fully adequate. From the perspective of children, mother can be negatively evaluated, too, as a person with a conservative frame of mind, curbing one's freedom, and forcing young people to follow patterns of behaviour that they no longer accept as appropriate. In the analysis we have used the material of the Hungarian National Text Corpus, the relevant dictionaries and encyclopaedias, as well as proverbs, phraseologisms, religious texts and questionnaire data.
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