The article tries to reveal the national particularity of usage of borrowed phrasemes, to show that despite their international character they function differently in different target languages adapting to culture, traditions, reflecting national psychology. The semantics of the same phraseological calque varies to some extent in various languages. The context of usage, frequency and relevance to the culture may vary significantly. The article describes some phrasemes with supplemental words, semantic extension, cases when collocations undergo further mataphorisation. Among the international phrasemes to be compared are some borrowings from the Bible, classic phrasemes of antique origin, mythologems. The diachronic processes leading to alteration of frequency, coining or losing of some connotations are also studied. The phraseme is considered to be like a living thing which adapts to a cultural environment and reacts to the changes occurring in it. The article contributes to cultural linguistics, helps to find the ways of fruitful intercultural communication.
semantics, phraseological calque, culturally marked components of meaning, extension, frequency, contextual usage.
1. Wierzbicka A. Ponimaniye kul’tur cherez posredstvo klyuchevyh slov [Understanding cultures through their key words]. Moscow, Yazyki slovyanskoy kul’tury Publ., 2001. 288 p. (in Russian)
2. Maslova V. A. Lingvokul’turologiya [Cultural linguistics]. Moscow, Akademiya Publ., 2001. 208 p. (in Russian)
3. Natsional’ny korpus russkogo yazyka. 265 000 000 slov [The National Corpus of the Russian language. 265 000 000 words]. 2003–2015. Available at: http://ruscorpora.ru/search-main.html (accessed 18 May 2016) (in Russian).
4. Teliya V.N. Russkaya frazeologiya: semantichesky, pragmatichesky i kul’turologichesky aspekty [Russian phraseology: semantic, pragmatic and cultural aspects]. Moscow, Shkola «Yazyki russkoi kul’tury» Publ., 1996. 288 p. (in Russian)
5. The British National Corpus (BNC). 100 000 000 words [Electronic resource] Available at: http://www.corpus.byu.edu/bnc(accessed 20 May 2016).
6. The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). 520,000,000 words, 1990-2015. [Electronic resource] Available at: http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/ (accessed 19 May 2016).
7. The Corpus of Historical American English. 400,000,000 (COHA). [Electronic resource] Available at: http://corpus.byu.edu/coha/ (accessed 25 May 2016).
8. Random House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary. [Electronic resource] Available at: http://kdictionaries-online. com/DictionaryPage. (acessed 07 May 2016).
