Three Levels of Phraselogical Unit Cultural Peculiarities

Elena Arsenteva (Kazan, Russia)

Email: helenaarsentiewa@mail.ru

 

ABSTRACT:

The problem of phraseological unit (PU) cultural peculiarities has attracted much attention in the works of modern linguists. V.N. Telia, for instance, points out that the typical feature of phraseological units is their image-based motivation, which is directly connected with the nation world outlook. V.A. Maslova stresses the close connection of PUs with the cultural-historical traditions of people speaking the language. D.O Dobrovolsky distinguishes between cultural-historical associations and national-cultural specific character of phraseological units. On the whole we may distinguish three levels of manifestation of PU cultural peculiarities:

1. in their joint phraseological meaning;
2. in the meaning of separate lexical components;
3. in the direct meaning of a variable word combination the meaning of which was transferred (i.e. in PU prototypes).

The first level is closely associated with phraseological units having no phraseological counterparts in another language (other languages). Phraseological units of the second level are presented by a rather small group of units, the components of which present some national realities. The national specific character of phraseological units belonging to the third level is dictated by their protopype.