On Selected Somatic Phraseologisms in Modern Greek and Serbian (translation Jerneja Kavčič)

Abstract

Bearing in mind that every element of the linguistic system can be subordinated to the communicative function of language, the authors of this paper seek to provide a contrastive structural and semantic analysis of a particular lexico-semantic group of somatic idioms or phraseologisms (phraseological units containing the names of bodily organs) found in the Modern Greek and Serbian languages. This brief analysis, based on a corpus gathered from dictionaries and translated books, is a pioneer work in its field either in Greek or in Serbian literature on phraseology. Since somatic phraseologisms diverge in their structure and semantic features, the authors attempt to find parallels between the two languages in their use of concrete concept forms, with the ultimate aim of explaining and expressing their metaphorical abstract meanings. This entails focusing on a selection of somatic phraseologisms which belong to separate phraseological inventories of the two languages.