ANIMAL BASED IDIOMS IN ENGLISH, INDONESIAN AND UZBEK: A COMPORATIVE STRUCTURAL STUDY

Animal-based idioms represent an important component of phraseology because they reflect the linguistic, cultural, and cognitive associations that speakers establish between human behavior and the animal world. This study examines the structural characteristics of animal-based idioms in English, Indonesian, and Uzbek, focusing on their grammatical patterns, lexical composition, semantic organization, and cross-linguistic similarities and differences. The research employs a comparative descriptive approach supported by phraseological analysis and contrastive linguistic methods. Representative examples are classified according to their structural patterns, including noun phrases, verb phrases, adjective-based constructions, and comparative expressions. Particular attention is given to the relationship between grammatical structure and figurative meaning. The preliminary qualitative analysis suggests that animal-based idioms in the three languages employ both shared structural mechanisms and language-specific constructions. Although certain animal images may convey comparable meanings, their phraseological forms and cultural associations do not always correspond directly. The study highlights the importance of distinguishing formal equivalence from semantic and pragmatic equivalence in comparative phraseology and translation.