Czech Phraseological Parallels to the Russian Dialect Idioms (Based on the Materials of the Complete Phraseological Dictionary of Russian Folk Dialects)

Abstract

The article provides a comparative analysis of Czech and Russian literary and dialectal phraseological units that characterize a wealthy person and prosperous life. Contemporary studies mostly deal with literal and colloquial idioms, whereas dialectal phraseology is rarely used for the comparative studies. It may stem from the fact that there are no large dictionaries of Russian dialectal phraseology. For this article, we used the materials for the Phraseological Dictionary of Russian Folk Dialects, which is being prepared under the supervision of prof. V. M. Mokienko. The Russian part of the research is represented by approximately 250 idioms, the Czech part totals about 150 units. Czech and Russian phraseological units were grouped together according to their common internal image,the themes of components, similar syntactic models, or similar logical motivations. As an example in the group that combines Czech and Russian phraseological units with a similar figurative basis, we show the model 'animal or bird refuses to eat any kind of food' known in different languages. There are different variants of the model known to Czech and Russian dialects, which represent different animals and birds, and different types of food. The analysis of the idioms grouped together on the basis of the themes of their components have led to the conclusion that in Czech and Russian idioms, the image of wealth is often interpreted through the images of money, storage, satiety, food (mostly fat-heavy and also sweet – in Russian idioms), fantastic abundance, etc. For the Russian dialect phraseology, we describe one characteristic syntactic model, which marks a rich person: one cannot be reached / hurt with any tool. This model was not found in Czech idioms. A comparative analysis showed that in Russian dialect phraseology, which characterizes a comfortable life, one often observes tautological constructions with the lexeme ‘live’. In the Czech part of the materials, there was no tautology. Thanks to the dialectal phraseology the materials for the comparative study of the Czech and Russian idioms have qualitatively and quantitatively grown. Because of these dialectal units, parallels in the semantics and syntactic structure of many phraseological phrases in the studied languages have been made obvious. We have also managed to identify several Czech-Russian phraseological internationalisms, further historical and etymological study of which seems to bring us closer to the issue of the typological or genetic similarity of these idioms in two Slavic languages. Usage of dialect phraseology also lets us reveal several syntactic features typical only for Russian phraseology.