Ethnical peculiarities of comparative phraseological units in the English, German and Russian languages

The article presents the results of comparative studies of phraseological units in the English, Russian and German languages, that are in terms of semantics oriented to interpretation and description of a person’s character, appearance, and mental capacity. The material for the studies was overall selection from lexicographical sources. It is ascertained that negatively marked comparative phraseological units demonstrate maximal concurrence within the languages explored; the lexical units that turn to be most productive in formation of comparative phraseological units in every of the three languages are distinguished. The comparative classification of phraseological units in terms of equivalence is proposed to distinguish complete and incomplete structural-semantic and functional-semantic equivalents. The following varieties of fractional equivalents were outlined: completely matching phraseological units that are based on relatively close but not equivalent comparison images; phraseological units that are constructed with the comparisons that include some additional elements presenting ethnocultural traditions; phraseological units that are built with some different images as comparison and reflect various sides of the phenomenon; phraseological units that are associated with a certain tradition, happening, event, and include proper names into their structure; ironical and pun-based phraseological units; phraseological units with similar formal frames in the languages under study and lexical variability, that is the top in number class.