Corpus study of somatic phraseological units

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Uzhhorod National University

Corpus study of somatic phraseological units

Tomenchuk M.V., Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor at the Department of Applied Linguistics

Summary

The somatic cultural code is one of the oldest. It relates to archetypic human concepts, which is the way of a person's acquisition of the world - the hermeneutical circle from one person to another and extrapolation of this circle on the environment. Anthropocentric aspect of phraseology focuses on set phrases used to nominate the human world. An important role in the nomination process of the objective world belongs to somatic phraseological units (SPUs) with lexemes denoting parts of the human body (somatisms). The person's uniqueness from the linguistic point of view lies not only in their intellectual or spiritual qualities but also in the peculiarities of their body structure and functions of different body parts, which are inextricably linked with these qualities. SPUs impart discourse with the national colouring of humour, irony, etc. The aim of the article is to analyze semantical features of somatic phraseological units and their representation in the corpus.

The study has determined the following semantic groups of SPUs representing the somatic culture code and corresponding spheres of human existence: SPUs nominating a person; SPUs actualizing physical characteristics; SPUs representing physiological processes; SPUs representing speech activity; SPUs characterising human qualities; SPUs representing the mental sphere; SPUs representing the emotional sphere; SPUs nominating the human work activity; SPUs representing the social sphere. The analysis of the COCA and BNC corpuses proves that the most frequently used somatisms as components of phraseologisms are the lexemes “hand”, “finger”, “eye”, “head”, etc. This situation may be explained by extra- linguistic reasons. The abovementioned somatisms are directly responsible for sensual (eyes) and logical (head) degrees of knowledge and the criterion of verity, i.e., practice (hand). The phraseological units containing somatisms predominantly actualize the semantics of human relations, feelings, emotions, and attitudes. It has been revealed that SPUs are common for the genre of fiction in both corpuses. The least represented genre in the COCA Corpus is academic one while the BNC's least prevalent genre is the magazine one.

Key words: corpus analysis, somatic phraseological unit, the COCA Corpus, the BNC.

Aнотація

Томенчук М. В. Корпусне дослідження соматичних фразеологічних одиниць

Соматичний культурний код є одним з найдавніших. Він пов'язаний з архетипними уявленнями людини, що є способом освоєння людиною світу - герменевтичним колом від однієї людини до іншої та екстраполяцією цього кола на навколишнє середовище. Антропоцентричний аспект фразеології фокусується на сукупності фразеологізмів, що використовуються для номінування світу людини. Важлива роль у процесі номінації об'єктивного світу належить соматичним фразеологічним одиницям (СФО) з лексемами на позначення частин тіла людини (соматизмами). Унікальність людини з мовної точки зору полягає не лише в її інтелектуальних чи духовних якостях, а й в особливостях будови тіла та функціях різних частин організму, які нерозривно пов'язані з цими якостями. СФО насичують дискурс національним забарвленням гумору, іронії тощо. Метою статті є аналіз семантичних особливостей соматичних фразеологічних одиниць та їхньої репрезентації у корпусі.

У результаті дослідження було виділено такі семантичні групи СФО, що репрезентують соматичний код культури та відповідні сфери людського існування: СФО на позначення людини; СФО, що актуалізують фізичні характеристики; СФО на позначення фізіологічних процесів; СФО на позначення мовленнєвої діяльності; СФО, що характеризують якості людини; СФО на позначення ментальної сфери; СФО на позначення емоційної сфери; СФО на позначення трудової діяльності людини; СФО на позначення соціальної сфери. Аналіз корпусів COCA та BNC доводить, що найуживанішими соматизмами у складі фразеологізмів є лексеми “hand” (рука), “finger” (палець), “eye” (око), “head” (голова) тощо. Така тенденція може пояснюватися екстралінгвістичними причинами. Зазначені соматизми безпосередньо відповідають за чуттєвий (очі) і логічний (голова) ступені пізнання та критерій істинності - практичну діяльність (рука). Фразеологічні одиниці з соматизмами переважно актуалізують семантику людських стосунків, почуттів, емоцій, ставлення. Виявлено, що СФО характерні для жанру художньої літератури в обох корпусах. Найменш представленим жанром у корпусі COCA є науковий, а найменш поширеним у BNC - журнальний.

Ключові слова: корпусний аналіз, соматична фразеологічна одиниця, корпус COCA, корпус BNC.

Problem statement

Somatic vocabulary is one of the most ancient universal lexical groups and one of the most important objects of study in comparative-historical, structural- comparative and linguo-cultural works of domestic and foreign linguists distinguishing this layer of vocabulary as the most important one in the lexical-thematic system of any language [1].

The reason for the constant attention to somatisms is the fact that the process of self-awareness of a person in surrounding reality and defining himself/herself as a personality began with the sensations that arose directly via the senses and parts of his/ her own body. The human body has proven to be one of the most accessible objects for observation and study, and words denoting parts of the human body are as old as human consciousness itself [2, p. 9].

Using these “instruments” of knowledge people began to orient in space and time, expressing their attitude to the world. The standard of human spatial orientation is the anatomical orientation of his/ her body: the front part is the one where his/her senses, the organs of vision are located, the back part is the part for the spine, reflecting structural asymmetry of the human body.

However, the comprehensive picture including the analysis of idiographic spheres of vocabulary and the intensity of creating new meanings based on somatisms has not been revealed yet. The study of this stratum of the vocabulary attracts considerable interest owing to the desire to establish links between the “object of the nomination and the person who nominates” as well as the opportunity “to see the inner form, ... the cause of their origin and to identify some patterns of naming” [3, p. 8].

The topicality of the study is determined by the increasing attention of researchers to the problem of identifying national and cultural information, which is manifested at all levels of the language system, and at the same time, insufficient knowledge of problems related to identification, description and analysis of the national peculiarities of the English language at the level of somatism.

Literature review

The semantic field of somatisms is quite significant in any world language. Phraseological units with somatic components constitute 30% of phraseological corpus of any language [4]. Rich polysemy and high productivity of somatic phraseologisms attract many linguists. These units have been considered on the material of various languages: Ukrainian (O.O. Selivanova [5]), German (I.P. Zadorozhna [6]), Spanish (O.L. Tolstova [3]), English (N.I Andreychuk [7]), Estonian (F. Vacc [8]).

A wide range of researched issues dealing with somatisms include conceptualization of somatic cultural code in idioms (О.О. Selivanova [5]); structural, semantic and functional characteristics of English somatic phraseologisms with the meaning of interpersonal relationships (Skrypnik I.Y. [9]); structural and semantic (N.Ya. Strilets [10]) linguocognitive (O.L. Tolstova [3]) peculiarities, etc.

The aim of the article is to analyze semantical features of somatic phraseological units and their representation in the corpus.

Results and Discussion

Names of body parts as the oldest stratum of the lexicon are directly associated with functional and carnal aspects of human existence and reflect the cultural- anthropological characteristics of the individuals belonging to a certain language community. This vocabulary is called somatic, i.e., it denotes parts of the body and the manifestations of the organism, and is one of the most interesting lexico-semantic groups. This group belongs to the main vocabulary fund which evolved over many millennia and which reflects not only the knowledge of native speakers about the world, but also their beliefs about themselves and about their body. Somatisms are characterized by stability, high frequency of use and, as a consequence, extensive semantic structure.

In the present research, a somatism is understood as language means designating phenomena related to the bodily sphere. Anatomical vocabulary plays an important role in the modeling the somatic fragment of the language world picture and is associated with the secondary figurative meanings typical for many languages. The body, its structure is a universal model for constructing a system of concepts in the language and culture of many ethnic groups.

Phraseological units with components-somatisms arise spontaneously, independently from each other, in different periods and in different languages, since they have a common basis which consists in the observation of a person himself/herself, parts of his/ her body, the general physical and mental characteristics of a human, in general conditions of development, in the observation of life and behavior of animals, in the study of actions and emotions.

The correlation of form and content of language units of different levels, the linguistic meaning and extra-lingual knowledge is based on the material of images, memory, and representation.

According to V.V. Zhaivoronok, “the meaning of linguistic units is much wider than simple concepts and may contain the information of extralinguistic, cultural, mythological-poetic character. Therefore, the information of a certain unit belonging to the world picture may include both - the data about the objective situation in the world as well as the information about imaginary worlds” [11, p. 109].

The nucleus of the somatic vocabulary includes three categories of names: 1) general names of the human body/human body parts and names associated with the specifics of male and female body; 2) designations of the internal organs that ensure the viability and functioning of the human body; 3) designations of the substances of the human body and its organs.

In our study we have referred to “Oxford Dictionary of Idioms” [12] and “NTC's American Idioms Dictionary” [13]. The method of continuous sampling has been employed in the process of selecting somatic phraseological units. Having analyzed phraseological units fixed in the lexicographic sources, we have sampled 752 English phraseological units with the somatic component. In the process of selection we have observed units containing 41 lexical units nominating: 1) the body and the external parts of the body: body, hand, finger(s), palm, thumb, mouth, wrist, elbow, shoulder, neck, lip, hair, belly, face, head, ear(s), eye(s), toe(s), heel; leg, foot, arm, nose, tongue, tooth, back, throat, waist, cheek, breast, chest, navel, etc. 2) internal organs: heart, brain, gut(s), spleen, etc. 3) substances of biological character: blood, skin, bone(s), skeleton, nerve etc.

In the process of our study, we have singled out nine sub-groups representing the somatic culture code and corresponding spheres of human existence:

Somatic phraseologisms nominating a person. Names of body parts are used as a part of phraseological structures in the metonymic function to denote a person. The priority in using the names of body parts in the metonymic function is given to the lexeme “head”. Thus, as the material under study shows, the lexeme “head” is used in the composition of the adverbial phraseological unit per head meaning “[for] a person; [for] an individual”. The lexemes “eye”, “nose”, “face”, “mouth” and “hand” are also used to nominate a person. The somatism “eye” is used in the phraseological unit a private eye meaning “a private detective”. The idiom to count noses meaning “to count people, typically in order to determine the numbers in a vote” [12, p. 202] uses the somatism “nose” to metonymically refer to a person. The lexeme “mouth” is used in the idiom a mouth to feed denoting “someone, especially a newborn baby for whom you must provide food” [12], for example: "See, Helen is out-to-here pregnant, which means I got another mouth to feed” [14]. "Now she's gone there'll be one less mouth to feed, one less mouth to eat up the profits” [12]. The somatism hand is used to denote “a person who engages in manual labour, especially in a factory, on a farm, or on board a ship” [14].

Somatic phraseologisms actualizing physical characteristics. The phraseological units belonging to this group denote notions included into the spheres appearance, age, weakness, strength and beauty. Thus, the notion of beauty is represented by the following idioms containing the somatisms “eye”, “face”, “skin” and “body”: the body beautiful, easy on the eye, a sight for sore eyes, eye candy, not just a pretty face, beauty is only skin-deep, for example: “A man that successful and easy on the eye had to get the play out of him before he settled down for life” [14]. “The resorts are elegant and easy on the eye, the hotels are stylish and airy” [15].

Somatic phraseologisms representing physiological processes. Somatic phraseological units of this group represent a number of meanings describing the sphere of physical condition and health: good/bad state of health (a sound mind in a sound body), a particular ailment, illness (sick to your stomach), recovery from an illness (to be on one's feet again), hangover (big head), vigilance (keep one's eyes open), pregnancy (a gleam (or twinkle) in someone's eye; the patter of tiny feet), for example: "Set your expectations low and keep your eyes open, for even these expectations are likely to be dashed if you're paying attention” [14]. "Well, it's alright I'll keep my eyes open and if I see it” [15]. Somatic phrase- ologisms denoting physiological processes also include the idioms actualizing the opposition “life-death”. In the process of the study, we have come across the following phraseological units with somatic component denoting the notion “death”: hand in your dinner pail, go the way of all flesh, turn up one's toes.

Somatic phraseologisms representing speech activity. Somatic phraseological units including the names of the organs of speech (speech apparatus) are used to actualize speech activity. In the field of conceptual representation of speech, we observe the usage of the external (lip, mouth, tongue, tooth), and internal (throat) speech organs. The relevant organ representing different aspects of verbal human activity is mouth. The somatism “mouth” participates in the formation of idioms denoting various aspects of speech activity. It may denote superfluous speech: run off at the mouth, a big mouth. Metaphorically, idioms with this somatism may also actualize the meaning of boasting: be all mouth (and no trousers), shoot your mouth off. The meaning “to be silent” is represented by the idiom to keep one's mouth shut, for instance: "If you don't have anything nice to say, then keep your mouth shut and move on” [14]. "Afraid to ask seemingly stupid questions, I kept my mouth shut” [15].

Somatic phraseologisms characterising human qualities. The group of phraseological units characterising human qualities is diversified. It includes idioms containing different external and internal somatisms and nominating various features of human personality. However, it should be noted that the somatism “face” is a key component in the composition of a number of phraseological units, verbalizing metaphorical connection of the inner world of a person and his/her appearance (e.g., to lose one's face, to save face, put on a brave face, two-faced, etc.), for example: “She knew this couldn't have been easy for him, but he was putting on a brave face” [14]. “The Bookman put on a brave face and smiled, but Endill knew there was nothing to smile about” [15]. These phra- seologisms may be subdivided into the units actualizing positive features and the idioms denoting negative human traits of character. The positive traits of character actualized by the somatic phraseol- ogisms include courage, determination, responsibility, forgiveness, honesty, hopefulness.

The negative traits of character include boastfulness, cowardice, indecision, hypocrisy, envy, laziness, treachery, self-interest, insincerity, aggressiveness, revengefulness, proneness to alcoholism. For instance, aggressiveness is mainly represented by idioms with the somatism “blood” associated with violence and the nominations of hand and its parts associated with fighting, for example: blood and guts, blood and thunder, have blood on your hands, go the knuckle, tear someone limb from limb. Proneness to alcoholism is expressed by the following somatic phraseological units: bend your elbow, hair of the dog, lift your elbow, wet the baby's head. phraseological lexeme somatism

Somatic phraseologisms representing the mental sphere. The relevant human organ in the representation of the mental sphere in human activity is the head. Since ancient times, the head was considered to be the main repository of thoughts, ideas, wisdom. The correlation between the somatic component “head” and mental concepts are characterized by “constituent motivation”. Thus, the majority of phraseological units representing the mental sphere contain the component “head”, for instance: a clever head, have your head screwed on right, use one's head, where someone's head is at, a cool head, etc., for instance: “What you must do is keep a cool head and take great care not to panic” [14]. “It was therefore essential to have a co-organizer, someone who would keep a cool head” [15].

Somatic phraseologisms representing the emotional sphere.

Studying language representation of emotional concepts, scholars focus on the universal traits and cultural uniqueness of basic human emotions which may be explicated by lexical and phraseological means. It should be noted that somatic phraseological units mainly denote negative emotions and feelings. There have been found only a few phraseologisms with somatisms nominating positive emotions and feelings including love (make sheep's eyes at someone), happiness, pleasure, and enjoyment (warm the cockles of someone's heart, kick up your heels, music to your ears, for instance: “Money matters bring sweet music to your ears if you stop to realize that you've earned it” [14]. “I suppose that comments like that are music to your ears?” [15]

Somatic phraseologisms nominating the human work activ

ity. Various idiomatic expressions differentiating between many shades of the meaning “a person at work” are widely used in the process of conceptualizing and categorizing various aspects of work activity. The leading organ symbolizing the practical activity of a person is the hand. Since ancient times, the archaic (and still topical) view of the extreme importance of the human hand for any kind of activity is fixed in idiomatic units. Thus, human activity is characterized in the following aspects: participation/avoiding participation in activities (put your hand to the plough, not lift a hand (to help someone), sit on one's hands), manual work (do something by hand), the degree of activity, tension (have one's hands full (with someone or something), interaction in the process of working (get a hand with something, give someone a hand (with someone or something), join hands), for instance: “It is time for youth and our next generation of thought leaders to stand up, join hands and voices with you and our countries leaders, influencers and those who have paid the price and paved the way” [14]. “I have a message of hope: the time has come to join hands ” [15].

Somatic phraseologisms representing the social sphere. Representing the most important concepts of human consciousness, human language reflects current trends in the transformation of the modern worldview. The object of consideration in the social sphere are primarily human relations. This plane of human existence is multifaceted: human relationships can range from unconditional support, friendship and care (e.g., shoulder to shoulder) to categorical rejection, contempt, deceit (e.g., have a bone to pick with someone) and even the threat of force impact (e.g., to be at each other's throats).

The English language abounds in the phraseological units with somatisms representing the following concepts included into the sphere of social relations: family (blood is thicker than water, blood will tell, your own flesh and blood), argument and conflict (a bone of contention, have a bone to pick with someone, at loggerheads, be at each other's throats, fight tooth and nail, a war of nerves), power (know where the bodies are buried, have someone eating out of your hand, in the hollow of your hand, under someone's thumb, twist someone round your little finger), class (be born with a silver spoon in your mouth, live off the backs of somebody, blue blood), cooperation (cheek by jowl, put your heads together, shoulder to shoulder), bribery, corruption, and extortion (with your hand in the cookie jar/ have your fingers in the till, grease someone's palm, stick to someone's fingers, sticky fingers), crime and punishment (the long arm of the law, take the law into your own hands, a slap on the wrist), poverty (keep body and soul together, from hand to mouth), for example: “My newfound flame, on the other hand, was a hair stylist with a very fast life style and despite making a decent living, generally lived from hand to mouth” [14]. “He lived from hand to mouth making instant resolves every time he opened his mail” [15].

The actual use of the selected somatic phraseologisms have been analyzed on then material of the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the British National Corpus (BNC). The COCA encompasses more than one billion words of text sampled from a wide range of genres: “spoken, fiction, popular magazines, newspapers, academic texts, TV and movies subtitles, blogs, and other web pages” [14]. The BNC contains 100 million words of text from the following genres: spoken, fiction, magazines, newspapers, academic, and miscellaneous [15]. The usage statistics of the most representative phraseologisms containing each of the specified somatisms are given in Table 1.

Table 1 PUs with somatisms in the COCA and BNC corpuses

Table 2 Distribution of somatic phraseologisms in COCA and BNC corpuses

It should be noted that the somatisms “hand”, “finger”, “mouth”, “thumb”, “eye”, “head”, “face”, “foot”, “arm”, and “chest” are ten most common phraseological components in the COCA while prevalent somatisms in the BNC are “hand”, “finger”, “foot”, “mouth”, “eye”, “head”, “face”, “arm”, “lip”, and “chest”.

The analysis proves that the most frequently used somatisms as a component of the phraseological unit are the lexemes “hand”, “finger”, “eye”, “head”, etc. This situation can be explained by extra-linguistic reasons. The abovementioned somatisms are directly responsible for sensual (eyes) and logical (head) degrees of knowledge and the criterion of verity, i.e., practice (hand). The phraseological units containing somatisms predominantly actualize the semantics of human relations, feelings, emotions, and attitudes.

The analysis of distribution across genres in COCA and BNC corpuses is presented in Table 2. The study reveals that the somatic phraseologisms are distributed unevenly in various genres. Thus, it has been revealed that 16,9% and 18,5% of somatic phraseologism usages fall to the fiction genre in the COCA Corpus and the BNC respectively. The least represented genre in the COCA Corpus is academic one comprising 7,6% of all usages. The BNC's least prevalent genre is magazine represented by 10,3% of all SPU usages.

Conclusion

Phraseological units represent an essential part of language and as such they effect the language potential and facilitate the cultural and national heritage. Their frequent use of somatic phraseological units proves that they idioms play an important role in terms of core vocabulary and therefore in language acquisition in general. Owing to their metaphorical character phraseologisms make the language colourful and rich, rendering human experience and the way a person cognizes the world around him/her. Since human body is significant to any human being, phraseological units containing the nominations of body parts are closely connected with the sensual facets of human existence. The comprehension of reality, when reflected in somatic phraseologisms, is often more understandable and vivid for language bearers.

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