PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS AND PROVERBS IN THE MODERN GERMAN LANGUAGE IN THE PROCESS OF FUNCTIONING

Abstract

The article covers the fundamental issues of classification of phraseological units, considers syntactic, grammatical and lexical restrictions to which phraseological units are subject. Within the framework of the undertaken study, cases of contextual modification of phraseological units in the German-language press are established by means of such methods as substitution (replacement), expansion and reduction, mechanisms are revealed and patterns of contextually conditioned authorial transformations are established, as well as associative links with the original form of the phraseological unit. Quantitative differences in the frequency of application of the analyzed methods of structural and semantic modification are found. As a result of the analysis, it has been established that the most numerous group of structural-semantic modification of phraseological units is represented by changes through substitution, that is, the replacement of one or more components with others. The consequences of such a replacement depend on the semantic relationship between the original component and the replacement component. The more contrasting the semantic differences between the two components, the higher the degree of impact on the recipient.