Somatic phraseologisms in the texts of žemaitė

Somatic Phraseologisms in the Texts of Žemaitė This bachelor thesis examines somatic phraseologisms (phraseologisms based on the names of the body parts) in the texts of Žemaitė. The main aim of this thesis is to analyse somatic phraseologisms from a semantic point of view. The total number of somatic phraseologisms collected for this analysis is 587, they consist of 39 different names of parts of the body. “Frazeologijos žodynas” (2001) and its electronic version were the main sources for phraseologisms whereas “Lietuvių kalbos somatiniai posakiai” (1979), “Vaizdingieji lietuvių kalbos posakiai“ (2008) by J. Lipskienė and “Palyginimų žodynas“ (2014) by K. Vosylytė were additional sources. Statistical, descriptive analytical, lexicographical and semantic research methods were mainly employed to analyse the collected data. The thesis is divided into theoretical and practical part. Theoretical part defines the concepts of phraseology, phraseologism and somatic phraseologism, introduces semantic classification and discusses structural and systematic features of phraseologisms. Practical part is devoted to the analysis of semantic features of somatic phraseologisms. Phraseologisms are assessed and arranged into 5 main groups according to their meanings: referring to persons mental state, physical state, actions, quantity and expressing various subjects. Each of these groups are discussed in separate sections. The analysis showed that most somatic phraseologisms refer to actions (50 %) and mental state (33 %). Somatic phraseologisms not often express physical state (6 %), quantity (4 %) or other various subjects (7 %). Furthermore, it revealed that most frequently used components in phraseologisms are heart, eye, head, nose, arm, leg and tongue. They are the names of most essential parts of human body. Phraseologisms with components eyelash, shoulder, loin and waist are rarely used, because these body parts don’t serve an important function. The minority of somatic phraseologisms represents body parts names of an animal or a bird: fur, paw, wing, bristle tail and udder. Finally, most phraseologisms are motivated: their meanings are based on functions and symbolism of body parts, they demonstrate body gestures and they make associations with real life situations. This thesis is limited to the analysis of phraseologisms from dictionaries. In order to find all somatic phraseologisms used by Žemaitė and in order to reveal their full meanings, it is necessary to collect them from the original source – from the texts of Žemaitė. As the thesis focuses only on the semantic aspect of somatic phraseologisms, their structural aspect could be analysed in further research. The results of this paper could be beneficial for people who are interested in the texts of Žemaitė, as well as for linguists conducting their research in somatic phraseologisms or in phraseologisms of Lithuanian literature