The article is devoted to the issue of the ethnic and cultural specifics of the Kalmyk and English proverbs and phraseological units containing ‘an animal component’. The main assumption is that each nation and each linguistic community perceives and reflects the world under the influence of its cultural and national customs, traditions and history, and creates its own worldview. The ethno-cultural character of any community’s worldview is clearly fixed in the language. Moreover, the language preserves the culture of the people and transfers it further to the next generations. The aim of the article is to give a structural description of the Kalmyk and English paremiological units. For this purpose, the ethnic peculiarity of each nation is examined and compared with that of the other one. Paremiological units with the structure of complex sentences present compound, complex and conjunctionless sentences. According to the comparative analysis, the most common type for both languages are paremiological units with the structure of complex sentences. The complex sentence structure with subordinate clauses of condition, time, place, as well as attributive and concessive subordinate clauses are mainly found in the Kalmyk proverbs. Whereas, complex, compound and conjunctionless sentences are often found in the structure of English proverbs. However, most Kalmyk proverbs have the structure of conjunctionless sentence and compound sentences are rarely used.

Синтаксический анализ паремиологических единиц калмыцкого и английского языков показывает, что наиболее характерным типом для обоих языков являются паремии со структурой сложноподчиненного предложения. Среди калмыцких пословиц, оформленных как сложноподчиненные предложения, в основном встречаются сложноподчиненные предложения с придаточными условия, времени, места, а также с придаточными уступительными. Английские паремии наиболее часто имеют структуру сложноподчиненных предложений, далее следуют сложносочиненные и бессоюзные сложные предложения. Калмыцкие паремии чаще оформлены бессоюзными сложными предложениями. Сложносочиненные предложения употребляются редко.