SEMANTIC AND STRUCTURAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS DENOTING EMOTIONAL AND MENTAL STATES

Abstract

The current paper analyzes the semantic and structural features of phraseological units denoting emotional and mental states in various languages. It is found that the emotional phraseology displays not only universal cognitive mechanisms but also language-specific cultural encodings, whereby somatic, color, and nature phenomena are the most used source domains for metaphorical transfer. The research also clarifies how different languages treat the emotional experiences in terms of grammaticalization and lexicalization via fixed multi-word expressions.