Belkina N. V., Shareshik D. Yu. Making the Finnish-Russian Corpus of Phraseological Units: A Case Study of Idioms Meaning “to Die”

Posted on 28.06.2026 by editor

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Original article

https://doi.org/10.15507/2076-2577.26182.170-182
https://elibrary.ru/jvwfmv
УДК / UDC 81’373:621.013:811.511.111:811.161.1

Making the Finnish-Russian Corpus of Phraseological Units: A Case Study of Idioms Meaning “to Die”

N. V. Belkina, D. Yu. Shareshik
Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation

Abstract

Introduction. A comparative linguistic analysis of the worldview of particular ethnic groups makes it possible to understand the differences between national cultures and the ways in which they complement one another. A Finnish-Russian corpus of phraseological units annotated according to specific criteria provides an opportunity to identify both universal and culture-specific features in the perception of the surrounding world. The creation and linguistic annotation of a specialized bilingual corpus of phraseological expressions constitutes a challenge; however, once resolved, it may yield an effective tool for comparative analysis and machine translation. The aim of the study is to determine the criteria for annotating a corpus of Finnish-Russian phraseological units and to test this annotation framework on a thematic group with the meaning “to die”.

Materials and Methods. The material for the study comprised Finnish and Russian phraseological units belonging to the thematic group “to die”, selected through continuous sampling from Finnish and Russian dictionaries of phraseology, slang, and colloquial speech. The relevance of this research stems from the absence of digital parallel phraseological corpora for the Finnish and Russian languages and, consequently, from the lack of annotation criteria for such a corpus. The pilot corpus, which currently includes 123 Finnish and 136 Russian phraseological units, is intended for comparative linguocultural analysis and for applied machine translation tasks. The methodology is based on a comparative approach that takes into account the thematic-semantic, stylistic, and etymological parameters of phraseological units.

Results and Discussion. A detailed tagging scheme is proposed, including semantic classification, stylistic labels, and indications of origin. In the process of tagging phraseological units meaning “to die,” a set of criteria is employed: a semantic-thematic criterion based on universal semantic metaphor; a semantic criterion taking into account connotative components of meaning; a stylistic criterion; a language pair criterion; and an etymological criterion. In addition to semantic, etymological, and stylistic parameters, the tagging process also considers the presence of derivatives and synonyms, as well as the grammatical features of phraseological units, which is necessary for the subsequent generation of contextually appropriate examples.

Conclusion. The developed corpus is valuable for identifying both universal and culture-specific features in the perception of the concept of death within Finnish and Russian linguistic cultures, and it also provides a foundation for further research in the fields of phraseology and cross-linguistic communication. The creation and tagging of the corpus according to the proposed criteria do not require specialized programming knowledge and can be carried out using open-source software. Such a corpus constitutes a step toward the development of a computational model of the linguistic worldview, which can be employed for processing large-scale data and training artificial intelligence systems.

Keywords: phraseology, linguocultural studies, parallel corpus, semantic annotation, Finnish language, Russian language, concept of death

Conflict of interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

For citation: Belkina N.V., Shareshik D.Yu. Making the Finnish-Russian Corpus of Phraseological Units: A Case Study of Idioms Meaning “to Die”. Finno–Ugric World. 2026;18(2):170‒182. https://doi.org/10.15507/2076-2577.26182.170-182

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Information about the authors:

Natalia V. Belkina, Cand.Sci. (Ped.), Associate Professor of the Department of Languages of Northern Europe, Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia (48 Moyka Embankment, St. Petersburg 191186, Russian Federation), ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-1080-1458, SPIN-code: 9094-6553, bel_nat@mail.ru

Denis Yu. Shareshik, Master’s Student of the Institute of Foreign Languages, Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia (48 Moyka Embankment, St. Petersburg 191186, Russian Federation), ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-1641-5681, SPIN-code: 5207-3621, shareshik.denis@yandex.ru

Authors’ contribution:

N. V. Belkina – ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims; preparation and creation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation); oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team.

D. Yu. Shareshik – conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the data; verification of the reproducibility of the research results within the framework of the objectives of the research.

All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

Submitted 13.11.2025; revised 02.12.2025; accepted 13.01.2026.

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