Semantic Features of Idioms, Which Contain Lexeme Crow as the Main Component

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to study the national-and-cultural specificity and semantic features of Chinese, English, French and Russian idioms, which contain the lexeme wū / crow / ворона / corneille as a component. The comprehensive analysis of such idioms in different languages carried out in conformity with the anthropocentric paradigm, resulted in identification of significant signs of a crow, which served as the basis for metaphorization in these idioms. The universal metaphors are based on the phenotypic or behavioral characteristics of the bird (black color, flying straight ahead, flying in a flock and an unpleasant hoarse croaking). The metaphor "crow – an unpleasant cry" is noted to be the most productive in Russian and English, while in the Chinese language it is "crows – a flock". Nationally conditioned metaphors and their sources are differentiated: in Chinese and English such metaphors prevail over the universal ones, idioms, which contain the corneille component, arose only in the French language. The connotative potential of the units with ornithonyms that denote a crow is revealed. The asymmetry of evaluation implementation is established: French idioms express only negative connotation; in Russian, most idioms contain a negative connotation, while their minor share has a neutral one. Chinese and English demonstrate various evaluative potential, yet the negative connotation dominates in the idioms; the neutral and positive connotations are explicated in much fewer idioms.