O FRAZEOLOGICKEJ MOTIVÁCII LEXIKÁLNYCH JEDNOTIEK

Phraseological motivation (PM) is understood as a special type of lexical motivation. This concept was first sketched by J. Furdík in his Teória motivácie v lexikálnej zásobe (Theory of motivation in a lexicon, 2008). PM, in his view, represents one of the seventeen types of lexical motivation. PM is connected with idioms (phraseological units). In the first part of the paper PM is compared with word-formation motivation (as a central type of lexical motivation). The second part analyses fundamental notions connected with PM which is defined – as well as word-formation motivation – as a principle. It functions as a process, it is a relation between the underlying syntactic structures (motivating phraseological elements) and motivated phraseological units (idioms), moreover it is a feature of phraseological units. The key to understanding PM lies in the concept of the motivating phraseological element which can be characterized as a complex entity consisting of intralingual dimension (i. e. components of phraseological unit, its „inner form“) and of extralingual dimension (i. e. connotations, implications, emotions, evaluation etc. of an object, person, situation etc.).