Abstract
The object of this research is phraseological units (PU) dealing with the sphere of human mental activity. The existence of active, productive components, such as somatisms, is characteristic for component structure of the phraseological units characterizing “mental activity of a person”. In this paper, we discuss the PU of the studied phraseosemantic field, including component-somatism bass/tête and zhurek/coeur which in their turn brightly reflect a linguistic view of the Kazakh and French world. Conclusions are drawn about the universal nature and a national originality of PU. Practical importance of such studies is very topical in teaching languages to a foreign-language audience, in teaching comparative linguistics, when developing thematic dictionaries, in teaching theory and practice of translation. Research of this type is closely connected with psycholinguistic problems of teaching the language facts and phenomena that are especially relevant for cognitive and comparative analysis.