Adjective Similes as Lexical Universals

The article deals with adjective similes of some Slavonic, Baltic and German languages from the position of typology and linguistics of universals and is aimed at revealing common fixed expressions. This approach corresponds to modern tendency in phraseological researches being set at the end of the last century. Nowadays one of the main tasks of lexical typology is to study the plan of expression rather than the plan of content. The cognitive approach appears to be helpful in achieving this task as its application in typology is recognized as rather productive way of searching for content universals and for the analysis of human knowledge that effects the development of language itself. Our research covers similes of eight languages and this fact verifies conclusions about universals existence. Continuous sampling, descriptive, comparative and cognitive analysis methods are applied in the study. The main results of the study lie in the proof of lexical universals existence among adjective similes of eight languages.