PHRASEOLOGICAL INTERNATIONALISMS IN HUNGARIAN AND SERBIAN

Abstract

Phraseological units are a prominent area of the lexicology of any language. Two types of tendencies can be observed within the phraseology of a language. On the one hand, their concrete surface realization is limited by the system and the linguistic potential of the language, the specific cultural and historical background of the language community, and on the other hand, they mostly contain universal human truths and factual statements that can be found in other languages as well. When comparing the phraseology of two or more languages, we can distinguish three main forms of correspondence: identical structures, partially identical structures with the same meaning expressed by other structural elements, and structures with zero equivalence. The study deals with Hungarian and Serbian idioms, which have the same lexical structure, with the aim of establishing the origin of this similarity, specifically whether they are borrowings, or whether they were created as a result of parallel development, following the same approach in the two languages.