Formation of English phraseological units with names of professions

The paper considers cognitive aspects of phraseological meaning formation. The research aims at identifying the role of metaphorical and metonymic transference in the process of phraseologization. The authors single out three levels of phraseologization according to the degree of semantic shift. At the first level, individual words within a phraseological unit are subject to metaphorical/metonymic transference. The principle of conceptual compositionalitydetermines the contribution of each component in the phraseological unit to the resultant meaning. The second level of phraseologization is characterized by a figurative reinterpretation of a free word combination. The principle of conceptual integration enables to explain the development of a phraseological meaning through the interaction between the meaning of the phraseological prototype, the image it produces, extralinguistic knowledge and metaphorical/metonymic transference. At the third level, semantic shift affects a phraseological unit. The meaning of the phraseologism, extralinguistic knowledge, the corresponding image and metaphorical/metonymic transference interact on the principle of conceptual integration. The analysis undertaken has revealed that polysemantic phraseological units are formed either when different concepts are simultaneously activated in the semantic structures of their components, or as a result of a successive development of one phraseological meaning from another. The article justifies distinguishing such a sphere of language study as cognitive phraseology.