Structural-Semantic Modeling in Phraseology: Forty Years of Experience and the Prospects

The purpose of this article is to analyze the experience gained in the field of structural-semantic modeling by domestic and foreign phraseologists working in the mainstream of the scientific school of V. M. Mokienko, the founder of this method, and to present prospects of the method applied to a dynamic system of modern phraseology. The relevance of addressing this issue is determined by the high linguo-cultural and linguo-didactic potential of phraseological modeling, the need to identify opportunities for its use in the study of phraseological layers that have not yet been fully developed. Using the descriptive method to process the data presented in the works on structural-semantic modeling, the author summarizes the results obtained by phraseologists for four decades of active use of the method in historical, etymological and linguoculturological research. The scope of the method’s application to the material of different languages, the breadth of the research spectrum in terms of synchrony/ diachrony is emphasized: from the reconstruction of phraseology at the level of the protolanguage to the modeling of phraseological units-neologisms. The research material was not only scientific sources, but also language material: phraseology of Russian folk dialects, modern urban speech and Internet communication. Using the method of structural-semantic modeling in relation to these phraseological layers, the author demonstrates the possibility of identifying generating models of formation and transformation of phraseological units, which until recently was considered impossible. For the first time, the method of structural-semantic modeling is also considered as one of the phraseographic techniques implemented by V. M. Mokienko and his followers in the field of academic and educational lexicography. Thus, the review of scientific sources presented in the article and the results of the author’s own research prove the productivity of the method of structural-semantic modeling, confirm its relevance and broad prospects in the study of Russian phraseology.