Phraseological Units of Mythological Origin with a Precedent Name as a Component: Features of Structure and Use in Newspaper Texts

The article analyzes the functioning of onomastic phraseological units of mythological origin with a precedent name as a component in modern newspaper texts in order to characterize the features of using these phraseological units and identify the specifics in the development of their phraseological meanings: preservation of culture-significant information related to the initial precedent situation, its reinterpretation and deactualization while functioning in speech. The material of the analysis is the texts of the Russian National Corpus. The author uses the following methods: observation, classification, quantitative and contextual analysis of phraseological units, elements of semantic analysis and semantic field modeling. Phraseological units were classified according to etymological features; as a result, the most numerous groups - of units of mythological and Biblical origin - are revealed. Observations made it possible to establish the actual meanings of phraseological units with precedent names as their components and to correlate them with the cultural meanings stemming from the precedent situations of the myths. In some contexts, the original precedent situation of the myth (the Trojan horse) is actualized. The use of units in phraseological and allegorical meanings formed on the basis of precedent situations and fixed in dictionaries (the sword of Damocles) is the most frequent. In many cases, changes of standard and development of new meanings are observed: for instance, the meaning “a conductor of evil” in the phraseological unit Pandora’s box is partly related to its general meaning, while the contextual meaning “a jewelry box” of the same unit is completely contrary to the original meaning. The analysis of examples of the use of phraseological units reveals various contextual meanings and gives an idea of the possible dynamics of phraseological meanings. The obtained data allow modeling semantic fields of phraseological units with precedent names as components. For instance, the semantic field of the phraseological unit between Scylla and Charybdis consists of the following components: 1) in a difficult situation, when danger threatens from two sides, 2) at a great disadvantage, 3) in a situation of choice, 4) between people of influence, etc. Among them, a generalizing feature is danger, it can be considered to be a dominant in the structure of the meaning of the unit, and other features can be considered to be the peripheral region of the potential development of the meaning.

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