FRAZEMI SA ZOONIMSKOM SASTAVNICOM KOJIMA SE IZRAŽAVAJU LJUDSKE OSOBINE
PHRASEMES WITH ZOONIMIC COMPONENT USED TO EXPRESS HUMAN FEATURES

Summary/Abstract: Paper analyses zoonymic phrasemes which express human features. Phrasemes have been classified in two groups: zoonymic phrasemes which express physical features and zoonymic phrasemes which express features of character. Classification has been further continued towards phrasemes that describe a person in a positive/good and negative/bad light. Research has shown considerably more phrasemes that depict features of character and carry a negative view of a human. As negative features of character we identified: greed, stupidity, ingratitude, laziness, stubbornness, capriciousness, foolishness, selfishness, anger as well as many other. Positive features were only a few: diligence, goodness, endearment, modesty, peacefulness, fidelity, attachment, cheerfulness and permissiveness. We find the reason for disproportion between meanings of phrasemes and predominance of those with negative meaning in the fact that it’s considerably easier to characterize one as a bad person rather than to find its good characteristics. Research has shown that animals which are endearing, mild and small are more inclined to be described positively. Usually, those are domestic animals and among the wild the herbivores. Wild animals, some domestic animals, certain types of birds, insects, mollusks and beasts are described negatively due to prejudices created by men for various reasons. Zoonymic phrasemes which express human features have been analyzed on structural and semantic level. Structural analyses included phrasemes’ range and their lexical structure, where phrasemes were analyzed according to syntactically main word component. Semantic analysis comprised of phraseological meaning, motivation and desemantization of phrasemes.

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