Linguocultural peculiarities of phraseological units with the component “water” in Russian, English, German, Spanish, and Tatar
Authors:   Kazan Federal University, Safina Rimma A. , Kayumova Albina R. ,   Kazan Federal University, Konopleva Natalya V. ,   Kazan Federal University
Published: December 2024

This study is carried out within a project aiming at a comparative study of phraseological units with the components that denote the four elements – air, water, fire, and earth– in five differently structured languages (in Russian, English, German, Spanish, and Tatar). The main aim of this research is to identify general and specific phraseosemantic groups with the component “water”. Water as a primal element has a profound and multifaceted embodiment in the phraseological fund of many languages. The study of the internal form of the phraseological units allowed us to identify, on the one hand, the universal symbolic meanings of the component “water”, and, on the other hand, to determine its national specifics. We selected 38 Russian, 45 English, 55 German, 69 Spanish, and 48 Tatar phraseological units with the component “water” from explanatory, monolingual, and bilingual phraseological dictionaries by the method of continuous sampling (total n = 255). Afterwards, the phraseological units were divided into phraseosemantic groups and labelled with connotational markers. Finally, common and differential phraseosemantic groups were identified for all the languages studied. The analysis revealed that phraseological units with the component “water” showcase a great variety both in terms of their general semantics and symbolism of the component itself. Hence, a fairly large number of differential phraseosemantic groups were identified in all the five languages. Quantitatively, phraseological units with a negative connotation prevail in all the languages, followed by the ones with neutral and (in the smallest number of cases) positive connotations. The exception among the compared languages is Spanish, where the number of phraseological units with neutral and positive connotations is equivalent. The positive symbolism of the component “water” is traced in all the languages because water is widely treated as a comfortable living environment, a source of strength and health, a symbol of purification, and a source of truth. All the languages also contain phraseological units that endow water with magical properties or symbolize the passage of time and changes in life. However, in phraseological units with a negative connotation water is commonly associated with risk, danger, an abyss, uncertainty, and turmoil. Ten common phraseosemantic groups could be found in all the five languages compared. These thematic series are the most numerous as they contain units which encode the universal symbolism of the component “water”. Simultaneously, 42 subgroups (out of 82 found) are present in only one language; thus, there is a fairly large number of differential dominant semes in the internal form of the compared units. Russian and Tatar show the greatest similarity. At the same time, Spanish leads in the number of unique groups. The identified synonymous series of phraseological units can subsequently serve for a more efficient and accurate search of inter-language equivalency.