Fixed expressions in cross-linguistic perspective

This book brings together twenty contrastive analyses of proverbs, fixed formulae, compounds and idioms from different languages (including Bulgarian, English, French, German, Latvian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Ukrainian) demonstrating the relevance of such analyses to our understanding of the connections between language and extralinguistic dimensions of reality. On the basis of essential agreements in form and/or expressive power of languages' phraseological corpora to which these papers bear witness, they offer an examination of borrowing and calquing processes and of the similarities and differences that lurk within the phraseology of various languages used to conceive of and conceptualize such varied subjects as religion, leave-taking, the home or telling lies.--Publisher.