ИСТИНА

The reseach is devoted to the ethnocultural functioning specifics of phraseological units (PU) with zoomorphic components characterized by a high connotative potential and considered among key sources of the cultural and national heritage of the Chinese nation. It presents linguocultural and semantic properties of the mentioned Chinese phraseological units with zoomorphic components. The author presented ethnocultural functioning specifics of Chinese phraseological units with zoomorphic components and described their linguocultural properties. In addition, the study identified and systematized phraseological units with zoomorphic components, examined their linguocultural properties, discovered the role and dynamics of zoomorphic components in the units under study, characterized semantic properties of phraseological units with zoomorphic components, considered properties of phraseological units with a common seme – zoomorphism. The linguistic material of this study shows that in Chinese maximum productivity of figurative phraseological meanings is displayed by zoonyms-names of domestic animals and birds: a horse, a cow / ox, a dog, a pig, a chicken. These images take the lead as regards frequency of their use as part of PU. Obviously, in order to characterize human behavior, feelings, appearance, all objects and phenomena of the external world, people resorted to comparison with what was close to them and always with them. Through comparison with the surrounding animals "homo sapiens" may have comprehended reality and themselves. The linguistic material used in the study clearly shows that the national specifics of phraseology most often retains the phraseological image, which serves as a convincing representation, a kind of "picture", against which people perceive the integral generalized and figurative meaning of PU. These PU also demonstrate that the phraseological image very often relies on realities known only to certain people, representatives of a certain nation. The national specificity of these phraseological images quite clearly reflects the way of life and character of certain people, their history, spiritual life, peculiar traditions, customs and ethnic life through specially selected lexical components of certain PU. Figurative and perceptive characteristics of the language-related zoomorphic code present an associative refinement of their conceptual features. Typically, combined characteristics of these linguistic units are considered in order to identify figurative signs of PU with zoomorphic code. Considering phraseological data of the Chinese language, one can notice that PU, in which zoomorphic components act as a figurative core, characterize not only figurative, but also conceptual and axiological aspects.