О полисемантичности ангела в русском и польском языковом представлении (на материале конструкций типа ангел любви / anioł miłości)

Abstract

Angel as an inhabitant of heaven fulfilling its specific roles during its earthly mission should have a religion-related name. However, the lexeme ангел любви /anioł miłości as a lexical unit undergoes the processes of language changes such as metaphorisation, among others. Its metaphorical meaning in both languages is developing in two variants: «angel > an ideal > human being» or «angel > an ideal > angel». The difference between them results from the fact that in the first case the angel becomes a medium for a certain idea or its perfect embodiment and thus the human being endowed with similar characteristics is called an angel. This is a similarity-based transfer of the name. In the other case, the angel embodying an idea becomes an ideal but it still remains an angel. The semantic change is encompassed by the semantic range of the word ангел /anioł. The article presents this type of phenomena that have been analysed on the basis of the constructions ангел любви /anioł miłości extracted from the Russian and Polish language corpora.