Comparative analysis of transparency of selected idioms

This thesis deals with selected Czech and English idioms and their transparency. Its main aim is to verify that in an idiomatic expression, the knowledge of the meaning of its individual constituents might help to decrease the opaqueness of the idiom but it does not tend to suffice to make the expression absolutely transparent. The theoretical part of the thesis is focused on the definition of an idiom and transparency, idiom processing and interpretation, differences between the Czech an English language and the correspondence of the selected Czech and English idioms. The practical part describes a research with the native speakers of Czech and English, which was conducted in order to verify the main hypothesis of this thesis. Key words: idiom, transparency, metaphor, metonymy, conventional knowledge, Proto-Indo-European, analytical language, synthetic language, correspondenc