The article deals with the methodology and techniques of lexical typological
studies. It focuses on the cross-linguistic analysis of semantic areas that
are deeply involved in semantic derivation processes, i.e. they either make a wide
use of words coming from other semantic domains (as is the case with pain predicates)
or frequently give rise to extended meanings (as e.g. rotation verbs, sound
verbs, aqua-motion verbs, adjectives of quality). Based on these data, we propose
a general approach to a lexical-typological study – a frame-based approach. It is
argued that semantic comparison should rely on a set of conceptual frames that
underlie the domains under examination and that can be revealed through the
analysis of word combinability in natural texts (corpora, spontaneous speech,
etc.). The results obtained by this approach can be easily visualized as semantic
maps, in which nodes are associated with frames.