The Intensity of the Emotional State of “Fear” at the Phraseological Level in Russian and Chinese

This article examines the possibility of indicating the degree of intensity of the emotional state “fear” using phraseological units in the Russian and Chinese languages. The study of means representing one meaning is based on the principle of describing linguistic phenomena from “meaning to form.” The objectives of the study include identifying Russian and Chinese phraseological intensives for basic verbs with the meaning “the subject’s being in the emotional state of fear.” As basic verbs, i.e. verbs that represent the norm on the intensity scale are the Russian verb to be afraid and the Chinese verb 害怕” [hàipà] (Russian to be afraid). In this work, phraseological units are analyzed precisely as a means of indicating intensity, and not as a separate class. The identified Russian and Chinese phraseological units are analyzed taking into account their semantic, evaluative, stylistic and grammatical features.