Fixed units naming the process of dying in the Polish language compared with Italian

Joanna Szerszunowicz

Uniwersytet w Białymstoku

Abstract

The paper discusses fixed units, raging from non-idiomatic phraseological units to idioms, naming death in Polish and Italian. Two corpora of word combinations have been excerpted from lexicographic works in order to conduct the analysis covering the following aspect: motivation, stylistics, axiology, semantics with a special focus on specifying function of the units, equivalence. The stylistics of the units vary greatly, since their functions range from elevation of the death to its depreciating, which results from the fact that word combinations perform a variety of psychological functions. The vast majority of the word combinatio ns excerpted appear in both languages, since either they are of Christian, especially biblical, or mythological origins. Other units belonging to the group are those reflecting common observations of the process of dying as well as the funeral culture. Therefore, the idioms belonging to the group are word combinations of a high degree of translatability. In many cases such idioms appear not only in Polish and Italian, but in other languages as well,, since they are of international character. However, there are units appearing only in one of the languages, i.e. either Polish or Italian. Some of them are products of metaphorical thinking specific to the nation, others base on word play. Moreover, certain idioms have a cultural motivation of national character, for instance they refer to the element of reality important only in a given culture or the key component is a proper name of national importance.

Keywords:

frazeologizm, ekwiwalent międzyjęzykowy, językowe ujmowanie śmierci