Motivational-imagery component of the meaning of some verbal phraseological units with the abstract substantive ‘thought’ in the modern Russian language

Abstract

This research is dedicated to the analysis of some verbal phraseological units, in which an object is expressed by the abstract substantive 'thought', from the perspective of motivational-imagery component. The article presents the results of study of the motivational-imagery component in the semantics of a number of verbal phraseological units with the abstract name 'thought', which is based on linguoculturological method developed by V. N. Telia and her supporters and presented in the “Large Phraseological Dictionary of the Russian Language”. The author explores the phraseological units within the framework of Chinese linguoculture for more determining the characteristics the Russian units. For this analysis, the author filtered out the phraseological units contained in the Russian National Corpus (https://ruscorpora.ru/new/), which include the abstract noun ‘thought’ that performs the function of the object of action, and the verbs “come / reach / run into / lead / point. The following conclusions were formulated: 1) the considered phraseological units reflect the metaphorical understanding of thought as a static object that outside the human body, the move towards which is performed by an individual, especially active is in relation to thought; 2) all phraseological units analyzed in the article demonstrate that thought is described as an intellectual product acquired by a human either through targeted mental activity, or influenced by external circumstances; 3) in general, the phraseological units under review act as a stereotypical representation on thought process of a person under the influence of certain external or internal factors.