Thematic group “animal world” as a means of interpreting phraseological units with the component “eyes”

• Published in: Неофилология
• Main Author: Meng Wang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Derzhavin Tambov State University 2021-06-01
• Subjects: linguistic world image; phraseological units of the russian language; word “eye”
• Online Access: https://neophilology.elpub.ru/jour/article/view/189

We attempt to consider Russian phraseological units with the components “eyes” and “animal”, with the help of which a person is compared with a positive or negative image of domestic or wild animals. We establish that zoonymic adjectives act as a means of interpreting phraseological units, mainly such characteristics of a person’s appearance as facial features and facial expressions are interpreted. We prove that the composition of phraseological units with the “eye” component for the most part contains a comparison of a person with domestic animals, which is reflected in a relative adjective. We substantiate that adjectives derived from zoonyms reflect a different degree of phraseological activity and indicate a greater degree of human interaction with domestic animals compared to wild animals. We express a judgment that entering the area of figurative meanings of Russian relative adjectives in phraseological units with a component of “eyes” such as ram, ox, crawfish, lynx, pig, dog, etc. introduces new information into the circulation of research, but at the same time eliminates such fundamental linguistic antinomy as synchronicity and diachrony.