TIME INTERVALS IN RUSSIAN PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS: A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC STUDY
The paper considers a graduation standard of time represented in Russian phraseological units. The data analysis demonstrates that phraseological nominations with the meanings of short time intervals refer only to the future. The psycholinguistic experiment proves that phraseological nominations with time mean-ings ‘far’ and ‘close’ are consistently arranged in a certain order on the mental map of Russian native speak-ers. This graduation standard is stable and is revealed in experiments with different groups of informants conducted by different methods. Several zones shaped by various linguistic means are discovered: the nearer zones are encoded via the body and its movements and by “official” names of distances; the farther ones are encoded via mythologemes.