English Mouth Idioms and Their Romanian Equivalents. A Cognitive Perspective
English Mouth Idioms and Their Romanian Equivalents. A Cognitive Perspective

Summary/Abstract: cognitive point of view a series of English and Romanian mouth idioms. While traditional linguists study mainly the formal and functional aspects of idioms, cognitive linguists have a completely different approach. Without totally denying the traditional perspective according to which the meaning of an idiom cannot be completely inferred from the meaning of its components, these linguists consider that there is a systematic conceptual motivation for a large number of idioms. Idioms are produced by our conceptual system and not simply a matter of language. The cognitive hypothesis attempts to provide an adequate motivation for most of these idiomatic expressions. Our work is based on the cognitive theory according to which idioms are motivated by conceptual structures: conventional knowledge, conceptual metonymies and metaphors. The notion of embodiment can be easily applied especially to human body idioms.We also try to demonstrate that there is a considerable degree of correspondence regarding English and Romanian mouth idioms in both languages, i.e., they share the same figurative meaning, as well as the same underlying conceptual strategies.

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