The transformational paradigm of a phraseological unit in Russian speech within the space of predictability and unpredictability

The paper aims at presenting the research potential of the transformational paradigm of the phraseological unit as a set of all detected speech realisations of its updated invariant, formed not by the principle of “predicting” the possible transformations, but of “collecting” their actual variants in speech. The starting points in this case are both the intralingual multi-sided (according to R. Sternemann) model of comparing the actual speech updates of the phraseological unit with its invariant as tertium comparationis and the broad understanding of the object of phraseology. The basic methods are methods of total sampling and textual identification of the phraseological transform, component-variant analysis, methods of phraseological modelling, applicative method, methods of historical-etymological and linguocultural analysis. The material of the research contains transformation paradigms of different types of phraseological units collected and systematized by the author (wolf in sheep’s clothing, return of the prodigal son, step on the same rake, man in a skirt, Pandora’s box, he who has a tongue can find his way), which were formed on the material of Russian fiction and non-fiction texts, Russian and Russian-language printed and electronic media, including texts of Internet forums and blogs of the early 21st century as a space of network (often anonymous) media communication. The systematization of phraseotransforms in Russian speech and structuring the transformational paradigm, taking into account the internal and external levels in the form of a “matrix,” opens up opportunities for searching for the systemic and the asystemic, the predictable and the unpredictable, for generalising the linguistic and non-linguistic factors stimulating the phraseoransformation and phraseoformation of the phraseological invariant as well as for determining the ratio of creative capacities of the language system and the creativity of the authors of phraseological transforms. The proposed model of analysis can be used in the context of intralingual and inter-lingual comparisons.