Zapukhliak I. Structural and Semantic Peculiarities of Idioms with the Component Denoting Inorganic Matter in the English and Ukrainian Languages

The thesis sheds light on the comparative study of idioms with the component denoting inorganic matter in the English and Ukrainian languages. Inorganic matter is defined as the scope of non-manmade objects characterized by no biological processes. The most numerous are those idioms that have a word combination structure which can be predetermined by their cognitive simplicity that allows using them easily in the communication. They are divided into substantival, verbal, adjectival, adverbial and interjectional idioms. Verbal idioms are the most numerous in both studied languages, the least numerous are interjectional idioms. The sentence-structured idioms with an inorganic matter component are less numerous in English and Ukrainian since their quite extended structure restricts the possibility of them being repetitively used in speech. The idioms with an inorganic matter component that have the structure of the compounds manifest themselves only in the English language. The idioms with the component denoting inorganic matter in the English and Ukrainian languages have both isomorphic and allomorphic structural models, though allomorphic ones prevail. The latter are predetermined by lingual, extralingual and metalingual reasons.