SEMANTICS OF ENGLISH AND UKRAINIAN IDIOMS WITH PROPER NAMES AS COMPONENTS

Abstract

The article deals with the analysis of semantics of the Ukrainian and English phraseological units with proper names as theircomponents. The objective is to identify isomorphic and allomorphic semantic characteristics of idioms with proper names, whichis considered to be a group of words with a specific linguo-cultural status. The language corpus is constituted by 300 English and291 Ukrainian idioms with proper names as components selected from dictionaries of idioms. A number of research methods havebeen applied in order to reach the objective, among which are comparative analysis, componential analysis, method of phraseologicalidentification. As a result, the role of proper names in the idioms structure has been outlined. The types of idioms according tothe component they are constituted by have been considered. The linguistic status of proper names has been identified. The correlationof the national and international components in the idioms structure has been determined. Peculiarities of semantics of the Englishand Ukrainian idioms under study have been described, as well as specificity of their connotative meaning. The method of quantitativeanalysis was used to ouline the trends concerning the frequency value of the semantic features in question.

Results. As individual designations of various objects, proper names acquire their meaning and become linguistic signs onlywhen the connection with an object is established. As part of idioms, proper names undergo complex semantic transformations, with their semantics being enriched. Being the constituent parts of idioms, proper names lose the function of individualization and acquirethe ability to generalize, characterize, thus transforming into language unit with an expressive meaning. The analysis of the idioms withonomastic component in the Ukrainian and English languages made it possible to single out such components within their structure asanthroponyms, toponyms, astronyms, as well as to classify the language units under study, and to model their major semantic types.Accordingly, the analysis of phraseological units with onomastic component brings into open the principles of the semantic organizationof the language units under study, which verbalize the worldviews of the corresponding language communities. The anthropocentricapproach to the investigation of the linguistic phenomenon in question has been defined as the main one. Correspondingly, the component“antroponym” within the structure of the phraseological units and the semantic group “Characteristics of a person” have been identifiedas considerably predominant in both languages. The idioms under study mostly possess negative evaluative connotations. No correlationhas been established between gender reference and negative or positive connotation.

Conclusions. Idioms with proper names make an important linguistic and cultural layer of the vocabulary in English and Ukrainian.A significant predominance of anthroponyms in the idioms structure is an isomorphic feature of this group of words. This fact, as wellas the significant nominative density of the semantic group “Characteristics of person” in both languages can be accounted for bythe anthropocentric nature of the phraseological systems of the languages under study. Astronyms as idiom components are found onlyin English, which is an allomorphic feature. In terms of origin, both national-specific and international units are found in the languagecorpus. A manifestation of isomorphism is also the fact that a significant part of English and Ukrainian phraseological systems isconstituted by idioms with biblical and ancient proper names. The prevailance of negative idioms is connected with conceptualizationof reality, where the positive is treated as the norm, and the negative is a violation of the norm, so it attracts more attention. The genderfactor does not affect the nature of the idiom evaluative meaning.