Somatic phrases of the Japanese and Yakut languages: A comparative aspect

This article attempts to conduct a comparative analysis of somatic phraseological units (PU) of the Japanese and Yakut languages. For the first time, special attention is paid to identifying typologically common and specific features of somatic PU of the compared languages; the degree of closeness of PU by semantic correlation is revealed; full, partial, false equivalents and non-equivalent PU in the somatic phraseology of the Japanese and Yakut languages re established. The aim of the study is to identify similarities and differences between PU with the component “body part” in the Japanese and Yakut languages from the point of view of interlingual equivalence based on the analysis of their lexical and semantic features. As a result of the study, universal and purely national features in the phrase-formation activity of somatic designations of the studied languages are revealed. In the analyzed languages, somatisms are quite widely used in the phraseformation process (54 somatic lexemes in Japanese and 55 in the Yakut language). Phraseologically active are mainly the same names of body parts (arm, eye, head). The universality in the use of somatisms in the specified languages is a consequence of the reflection of extralinguistic factors, extralinguistic realities. For example, such human organs as arm, eye, head, heart, leg perform more vital functions than hair, forehead, neck, etc. A specific feature of the use of lexical somatisms in the compared languages is the different, and sometimes contrasting, phrase-formation potential of some somatic lexemes. Thus, the phrase-formation activity of components in different languages can be different.