Phraseology and Culture in English

3. Sample 
analysis 
The data for my analysis are collocations into which the respective adjec-
tives for the concept of 
HOT
enter in language use. The usage data are avail-
able in the form of computer-readable corpora of the three languages at 
issue. The analysis aims at qualitative findings, quantification is considered 
as a means to an end. 
3.1. The node word/s 
The analysis starts out from an English adjective and its Russian and Ger-
man equivalents: E hot, R gorja
þ* / žark*, G heiß. The words denote, cen-
trally and without any further (contextual) specification of the frame to be 
evoked for its understanding, a feeling or state of warmth that can be ex-

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Hot, heiß, and gorjachij
141
perienced as a result of (the bodily sensation of) a particular temperature. 
Any further sense the words may take is bound to contexts or scenes other 
than temperature, which in their turn are associated with other frames or 
mental models. 
The words’ etymologies suggest that the central sense of 
HOT
was origi-
nally construed in a comparable way in English, Russian and German us-
age, which is one reason for the assumption of some overlap in its modern 
usage: Pfeifer (1989: 670) relates both G heiß and E hot to an Indoeuropean 
root IE *k
ăi-, kƱ- (‘heat’ or ‘to burn’). Also R žark*, an adjective derived 
from the Noun žar, has been traced back to proto-Slavic *g
Ɲrɶ (‘heat’) from 
IE *
ƣhƝr-, whereas R gorjaþ* is the present participle of the verb goret’
(‘burning’ – ‘to burn’) which is habitually used as an adjective. Having 
undergone different sound changes, this verb is related to the same IE root 
*
ƣhƝr- as žar (cf. Cyganenko 1970: 145; ýernyx 1993: 205, 291; Vasmer 
1976: 295, 410). That means that, in all three languages, the words go back 
to a noun meaning heat, and as the formal make-up of R gorja
þ* suggests 
(derivation of a verb (R goret’), from the present participle of which (gor-
ja
þ*) we have the adjectival meaning ‘burning’), we can hypothesize the 
meaning of the adjectives to be metonymically related to that of the respec-
tive verbs. By this (conceptual) metonymic extension (
CAUSE FOR RESULT
),
we have the motivated meaning of ‘sending off heat’, which is what we – 
by default – associate with the adjectives hot, gorja
þ* / žark*, and heiß
respectively. Since E hot (OE h
Ɨt) and G heiß (OHG heiɁ) are also related 
to OE hætan (> to heat) and OHG heizan, haiz
Ǖan (> heizen), the forms can 
be assumed to be characterized in terms of the same (conceptual) meton-
ymy: the adjectives express a property resulting from the process / event 
expressed by the verbs. 
If we consider the association with temperature the ‘default’ sense, the 
temperature model must be understood to be the prototypical frame evoked 
by the words hot, gorja
þ* / žark*, heiß. The mental model of temperature is 
the base that the user of the word evokes in order to fully grasp the mean-
ing of 
HOT
as the prominent substructure, the profile, within this base (see 
footnote 2). In other words, when we understand 
HOT
, we need to access our 
concept of temperature, apparently a scalar model from freezing to burning, 
the upper part of which is profiled by 
HOT
, so that understanding 
HOT
presupposes knowledge of temperature. 
Temperature, in turn, belongs to what Langacker (1991a: 544) calls
“basic domains”, by which he understands “a cognitive domain (such
as time, three-dimensional space, the pitch scale, or color space) that is

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