Metaphors and Metonymies in Latvian and English Phraseological Units with the Keyword Head
Metaphors and Metonymies in Latvian and English Phraseological Units with the Keyword Head

Summary/Abstract: Phraseology, often considered a supplementary discipline in the past, now occupies a central place in many fields as an object of interdisciplinary research for cross-cultural and cross-linguistic studies in general and cognitive linguistics, pedagogy, translation, corpus and computational linguistics, lexicography, and psychology. Two databases in Latvian and English are used to extract phraseological units (PUs) with the keyword “head”. The article aims to identify, compare and contrast metaphorical and metonymic Latvian and English phraseological units, discussing the similarities and differences in meanings of the base form of a phraseological unit (PU) and its use in every analysed case. Since metaphor and metonymy are central thought patterns in cognitive linguistics, testing their function in PUs is crucial. Metaphorical and metonymic Latvian PUs and their English counterparts are examined in the cognitive linguistic framework, analysing conceptual metaphors and conceptual metonymies. Corresponding pairs of PUs are studied as one set to establish if they will function similarly. It can be concluded that pairs of PUs in both languages have the same structure, convey equivalent meanings and even have the same type of conceptual metonymy: a part stands for the whole, for instance, divas galvas (ir) gudrākas nekā viena (two heads (are) smarter than one) and its English counterpart: “two heads are better than one”.

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