The article aims to reveal the conceptual foundations of English and Ukrainian idioms containing names of food. The methodological toolset employed in the paper includes the notions of conceptual sphere, domain, and subdomain used in cognitive linguistics as well as basic propositional schemas (BPS) which are recognized by the semantics of lingual networks as the units human mentality operates. The first stage of analysis consisted in distribution of food products whose names feature in the idioms of the two languages across domains and subdomains constituting the corresponding conceptual sphere. Then, the structures and quantitative parameters of English and Ukrainian domains and subdomains were compared, exposing major similarity of the structure but significant differences in the usage frequency of certain products. The identified frequency enabled us to determine the constituents of the typical diet of the English and the Ukrainians. For the English, it contains broth, meat, eggs, beans, salt, cheese, pie (cake), nuts, and apples washed down by wine, milk, and tea. Ukrainians conventionally consume bread, butter, soup, porridge, peas, lard, pepper, salt, horseradish, pie, bagels, poppy, nuts, and honey accompanied by horilka and milk. The second stage of analysis focused on exposing the nature of characteristics of products mentioned in the idioms of both languages. Conceptually, such features correlate with predicates of basic propositional schemas. The numerical indices that manifest the frequency of their usage allowed us to pinpoint the peculiar features of the mentality of the two nations that are reflected in the idioms of corresponding languages.
Dmytro Pavkin (Mon,) studied this question.