Abstract:
The aim of the paper is to discuss culturally determined lexical constituents of phraseological units with reference to cross-linguistic equivalents. The focal issue is to analyse the relation between the special nature of the components at issue and their target language counterparts. The notion of culturally determined lexis, i.e. culture-bound words, is explained and exemplified with lexical itemsfrom various European languages. Special attention is paid to culture-bound appellative nouns and proper nouns. The presentation of the typology of cross-linguistic equivalents is followed by case studies, i.e. the analyses of selected phraseological units and their cross-linguistic equivalents. The sourcelanguage expressions chosen for the analyses are the ones which contain eithernon-equivalent lexical items or words which have lexical equivalents, but onesof different status, connotations etc. in the target language. The case studies show that cultural determinism of the constituents of given phraseological units does not necessarily result in their zero equivalence. However, a multiaspectual analysis proves that the culture-bound character of the unit creates asymmetry on the connotative plane.
