Structural-semantic transformations of phraseological units in Russian and Slovak newspaper articles.

This paper deals with one of the manifestations of current innovative processes in phraseology, i.e. structural-semantic transformations of phraseological units in Russian and Slovak newspaper articles. The aim of this paper is to present an overview of structural-semantic transformations followed by a comparative Russian-Slovak analysis of creative modifications from selected journalistic sources and to summarize certain national-specific features of phraseological transformations in the given languages. Structural-semantic transformations include a spectrum of various types of modifications that affect both the structural and semantic levels of phraseological units. They are popular among journalists because they are an effective means to attract the recipient's attention, to increase the overall expressiveness of the newspaper articles, and to add semantic richness and imagery to transformed phraseological units. We will focus on insertion, substitution of components, phraseological paronomasia, contamination, and phraseological ellipsis. Each type of transformation is distinguished by its characteristic features and fulfils different functions in journalistic style, which we aim to determine throughout the analysis. Incorrect (or inappropriate) transformations of phraseological units are included in the material as well, even though they are not so frequent in journalistic practice. Structural-semantic transformations of phraseological units are widely used in both analysed Slavic languages; however, they appear to be more productive and richer in the Russian language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]