Phraseology and Culture in English

3.2.3.2. Predicative use of 
heiß
Also here we find data that are parallel to those discussed for English and 
Russian. However, in addition to the copular verbs denoting (changes of) 
states sein (be), werden (become), bleiben (remain), also the verbs reden
(talk), laufen (run), and machen (make) could be identified in copular or 
complex-transitive constructions. Table 8 gives an overview. 
Table 8. Copular verbs associated with heiß 
Verb 
Number of occurrences 
Senses 
sein (be)
150 
literal, danger, emotion 
werden (become) 
49 
literal, danger 
reden (talk) 
7 
emotion 
laufen (run) 
6 
literal 
machen (make) 5 
emotion 
bleiben (remain) 
4 
literal 
As compared with English and Russian, the German data contain two addi-
tional verbs for which the complete expressions have no literal readings, 
reden and machen, in the (fixed) collocations sich die Köpfe heiß reden (be 
involved in a heated debate) and sich nicht heiß machen (not get excited). 
The verb laufen (run): Maschinen / Telephone laufen heiß (engines over-
heat, telephones buzz), also shows in the English data (where it can also 
render an emotional sense). 
3.2.3.3. Adverbial use of 
heiß
German adverbs are formally identical with their related adjectives. Simi-
larly to the situation in Russian, they can be differentiated by their lack of 

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Hot, heiß, and gorjachij
159
inflection and on a functional basis: whereas adjectives modify nouns, the 
adverbs modify verbs, adjectives and other adverbs respectively. Table 9 
gives a survey. 
Table 9. Adverbial use of heiß 
Function Modified 
words 
Verbal modifier: 
begehren (desire), ersehnen (long for), umkämpfen (fight for),
umwerben (court), erkämpfen (fight for), diskutieren (discuss),
hergehen (sparks fly), brennen (burn), glühen (glow), baden
(bath)
Adjective modifier: begehrt (in demand), geliebt ((be)loved), umstritten (debated)
The majority of the German data also show an emotional reading of heiß,
with the exception of glühen and brennen, which take both a literal and an 
emotional reading. 
3.2.4. Idioms in English, Russian and German 
The last amount of data to be presented is the usage of 
HOT
in idiomatic 
expressions. There are two criteria for listing them separately: firstly, they 
cut across the categories I used in the organisation of my data so far, and 
secondly, they are all entrenched with a meaning that is (more or less) 
opaque. The latter fact puts them at the frozen end of the collocational scale 
mentioned in Section 2.1. 
As can be expected from what Shore said on a language’s verbal formu-
lae (cf. 2.1. above), idioms will at all probability exhibit distinctions be-
tween the languages at issue which can be traced back to differences in the 
cultural interpretation of the events to be verbalized. 
It should be noted here that the basis for my discussion are the idioms 
that have been found in the corpus data, i.e. I did not draw them from dic-
tionaries of idioms, which will certainly have a lot more. 
The following idioms could be identified in the data: