Characteristic features of Phraseological units (the origin, classification).

Phraseology is the branch of lexicology, specializing in word group by stability of structure and transferred meaning. The vocabulary of the language contains not only separate words, and free word groups but also set phrases with the variable contexts. Phraseological units are used with fixed constant structure.

The origin of phraseological units.

According to the origin they divided into 2 groups: native and borrowed.

Native. The main sources of native are:

1. Terminological and professional expressions. FE: center of gravity, cut the painter (стать не зависимым).

2. British literature. FE: Шекспир: the green-eyed monster – jealousy.

3. British traditions and customs: baker’s dozen – 13

4. Superstitions and legends: FE: black sheep. Halcyon days – very happy period in the past.

5. Historical facts and events, personalities: to do a Thatcher – to stay in power,

6. Phenomena and facts of everyday life. FE: To get out of wood – to be saved from danger or difficulty.

2) the main sources of borrowed ph units:

1. Hearly script (святописание):

Doubting Fomas- Фома неверующий

forbidden fruit- запретный плод

2) ancient legends and myths belonging to different religious and cultural traditions

Aladdin’s lamp Procrustean bedden- необходимость подчиниться какой либо ситуации

3) Facts and events of the world history to cross the Rubicon

Variants of English language:

5) other languages/ classical and modern Fair sex(French)- слабыйпол

 

Vinjgradov’s classification is based on semantic principles. He classified them ino 3 groups: 1) phraseological fusions (сращение) are completely non-motivated word groups (to kick the backet - отбросить коньки, tit for tat- зубзазуб, окозаоко, to make the bag – убить дичь и больше чем др. Участники охоты). The meaning of the components has no connection at least synchronically with the meaning of the whole group. 2) phraseological unities (единства) are partially non-motivated as their meaning can usually be gathered from metaphoric meanings of the whole phraseological unit (to wash one’s dirty linen in public - выносить сор из избы). 3) phraseological collocations are motivated but they are made up of words possessive a certain degree of stability in such word combinations. The variations of the components are strictly limited. We can say “to bare the grudge “–иметь зуб на кого-либо, or “to bare malice”(злобу), but not “to bare fancy (or like). The habitual collocations tend to become a kind of clichés where the meaning of the components is dominated by the meaning of the whole group.

Classifacition of Kunin.

1. Nominative phraseological units are represented of word group including one meaningful word and coordinative phrases. (wear and tear of life – жизненное переутомление, wear and tear of time – разрушительная сила времени). This class also includes word groups with predicative structure (as the crawl flies, ships that pass in the night). Мои примеры: baker’s dozen –чертова дюжина, eat one’s word – брать назад свои слова, bed of roses – лёгкая жизнь.

2. Nominative-communicative phraseological units include word group of type: to break the ice, the ice is broken. Nominative phraseological units may be transferred into the sentences in passive voice. (To pull one’s leg – smb’s leg is pulled).

3. Neither nominative no communicative, there are interjections (Bless you, hear…hear). It denotes human feelings and emotions (Oh, my eye!=Oh, my God)

4. Communicative phraseological units have the structure of the sentence. (proverb, sayings)

 

Ph. Units in modern English are also approached from contextual point of view. This approach is suggested by professor Amosova. She defines phraseological units as units of fixed context and subdivides into 2 groups: 1) phrasems. Are two member word groups in which one of the members has specialized meaning, dependent on the second component “Small beer and small hours” 2) idioms. Are distinguished from phrasems by their idiomatisity of the whole word group “sofa potato”. Idioms are semantically and grammatically inseparable units. They may comprise unusual combination of words.

 

Synonyms and Antonyms.

Synonyms.

Synonyms are usually defined as words belonging to one part of speech, close in meaning and interchangeable at least in some contexts. Synonyms are characterized by either the semantic relations of equivalence or by the semantic relations of proximity. The degree of semantic proximity is best of all estimated in terms of the aspects of meaning, i.e. the denotational, the connotational, and the pragmatic aspect.

Taking into account the difference of synonyms by three aspects of their meaning, they may be classified into: - stylistic; - idiographic; - idiographic stylistic synonyms.

Stylistic synonyms are similar in the denotational aspects of meaning but different in the pragmatic aspect.

Idiographic synonymy presents a lower degree of semantic proximity and is observed when the connotational and pragmatic aspects are similar, but there are certain differences in the denotational aspect of meaning.

Idiographic-stylistic synonymy is characterized by the lower degree of semantic proximity. This type of synonyms includes synonyms which differ both in the denotational and the connotational aspects of meaning: ask – inquire.

 

Antonyms.

Antonyms – are a class of word grouped together on the basis of the semantic relations of opposition. Antonyms are words belonging to one part of speech sharing certain common semantic characteristics. Structurally they can be classified into antonyms of the same root (cheerful-cheerless) and antonyms of different root (day-night). Semantically they can be divided into 1)contradictories 2) contraries 3) incompatibles. Contradictories represent the type of semantic relations that exist between pairs like single-married. These antonyms are mutual opposed. They deny one another. Contraries are antonyms that can be arranged into a series according to the increasing difference in one of their qualities. This may be observed in “cold-hot, cool-warm” which are intermediate members. Thus we may regard antonyms not only cold and hot, but also cold and warm. Incompatibles are antonyms which are characterized by the relations of exclusion. Semantic relations exist among antonyms with a common component of meaning and may be described as the reverse of hyponymy. FE: to say morning is to say not afternoon, not evening. They are members of the multiple-term sets. Mostly antonyms are adjectives which is natural because characteristics are easily compared and contrasted. (old-young, strong-weak). Verbs take second place (open-close). Nouns are not many. Adverbs can be subdivided into 2 groups: 1) Derived from adjectives: lovely, softly. 2) adverbs proper (here-there, ever-never).

 

17. The main approaches to the parts of speech theory. theoretical study of lang-ge in the history of science began with the attempts to identify & describe grammatical classes of words called ’parts of speech’(POS). In modern Linguistics parts of speech are differentiated by a number of criteria. The polydifferential (“traditional”) classification of words is based on the 3 criteria: semantic, formal, functional - referred to as ‘meaning, form, function’. The semantic criterion presupposes the evaluation of meaning of the words of the given POS. The formal provides for the exposition of all formal features (inflectional & derivational). The functional concerns the typical syntactic functions of the POS.

In accord with traditional ‘meaning, form, function’, the words on the upper level are divided into notional & functional. Notional: the noun, the adj, the numeral, the pronoun, the verb, the adverb. The notional POS are the words of complete nominative value, they fully name and denote things, phenomena. Opposed to notional, there functional POS which are words of incomplete nominative value, but of absolutely essential gram value. Funct-nal: the article, the prep-tion, the conj, the particle, modal verb, interjection. They are limited in number.

The syntactic (monodifferential) clas-tion is based on syntactic charact-cs of words only. This clas-tion was worked out by L. Bloomfield, Z.Harris, C.Fries. It concerns 4 main syntact positions of notional words: noun, verb, adj, adverb. Pronouns are included into the corresponding positional classes as their substitutes. The other words which were not said are functional.

Noun and its categories.

Noun is a notional part of speech, characterized by following features:

1. It has the categorial meaning of “thingness”. Nouns denote the objects of reality concrete and abstract, animate and inanimate, countable and uncountable.

2. Noun has categories of number, case, gender and article determination.

3. Morphologically noun possesses special word building morphemes: tion, er, ness, hood, ship, dom and so on.

4. Syntactically noun is characterized by special types of combinability: with articles, other determinants (demonstrative, possessive, indefinite pronouns), with nouns (prepositional combinability – an entrance to the house, casual combinability – the president’s speech, sheer contact – a sports event, film festivals), with adjectives (prepositive and postpositive), with verbs.

5. Semantically noun is characterized by its categorial its functions. The primary substantive functions of the noun are a subject and an object. Its other functions are predicative, attributive and adverbial.

Category of case. Case is a grammatical category that shows the relation of the noun with other words in a sentence. There are many theories on problem of case in English.

1. Particle case theory. According to this theory English has two cases: Common case (sister) and Genitive case (sister’s). The common case is unmarked, it has no inflexion. The genitive case is marked by apostrophe. The genitive case can be: 1. Possessive (the idea of belonging – Mary’s father). 2. Subjective (the doctor’s arrival – the doctor has arrived). 3. Objective (John’s surprise – John was surprised). 4. Adverbial (2 hours’ work – somebody worked for 2 hours).

2. Theory of positional cases. According to this theory there are inflectional genitive case and four non-inflectional cases – Nominative, Vocative, Dative and Accusative

3. Theory of prepositional cases. Prepositions “to” and “for” plus noun form the Dative case and preposition “of” forms Genitive case.

4. Postpositional theory. According to this theory English language has lost completely the category of case, and genitive case is considered to be a combination of noun with a particle.

Category of number. This category is expressed by the opposition of the plural form of the noun to its singular form. The meaning of the singular is interpreted as “one” and the meaning of plural is “many”. The productive ways of expressing plurality is the morpheme –S with allophones [s], [z], [iz]. The other ways are vowel interchange “men-man”, the archaic suffix en, “child-children” and also individual singular and plural suffixes of borrowed nouns: phenomenon-phenomena.

Category of gender. In Modern English noun has not got the category of grammatical gender. Gender can be masculine, feminine and neuter. In plural all genders-neutralized. Nouns can show the gender by mean of another word: boy-friend, girl-friend or with the help of suffixes –ess (mistress, lioness).