The notion of phraseology. The main properties of pharaseological units.

The term phraseology has been discussed for a long time. It was introduced by the Swiss linguist Ch. Bally in 1905 in his work “French Style” for denoting a branch of stylistics studying stable word combinations. There is a great difference in the approach to the problem by Russian and foreign scholars. The word " phraseology" itself has very different meanings in this country and in Great Britain or the United States. In Russian linguistic literature there are several approaches to what should be considered a phraseological unit.

V.V. Vinogradov, A.I. Smirnitsky, N.N.Amosova, A.V.Kunin and others use the same word "phraseology" to denote the branch linguistics studying the word combinations with a transferred meaning. Their ideas of what is such a word combination and how they should be classified differ, but in any case they turned phraseology into a separate branch of linguistics.

V. V. Vinogradov worked with the Russian language and used the term for all expressions with a tranferred meaning irrespective of the structure and properties of the unit. A.I.Smirnitsky called phraseological expressions those which do not possess expressiveness or emotional colouring. I.V.Arnold was of the opposite opinion called so only imaginative, expressive and emo­tional units.

N. N. Amosova insisted on the term being applicable only to fixed con­text units, in which it is impossible to substitute any of the compo­nents without changing the meaning of the whole unit and separate elements. O. S. Akhmanova repeatedly insist­ed on the semantic integrity of such phrases prevailing over the structu­ral separateness of their elements. A. V. Kunin lays stress on the struc­tural separateness of the elements in a phraseological unit, on the change of meaning in the whole as compared with its elements taken separately and on a certain minimum stability.

In English and American linguistics no special branch of study exists and the term "phraseology" is stylistic, meaning "mode of expression, or choice and arrangement of words and phrases charactericstic of some author or some literary work.

The other term widely used is "idiom " which is even more polysemantic. Foreign shcholars apply it to a group of words whose meaning it is difficult to understand from meaning of the components. Moreover, "idiom" may be synonymous to the words "language" or "dialect", denoting a form of expression peculiar to a people, a country, a district, or to one individual. In Russian linguistics idioms are considered within the sphere of phraseology, which means that they are phraseological units of a special kind.

I.V.Arnold prefers to use the term "set expression " as it is more definite because the first element points out its stability, the most important char­acteristic of these units.

In reality the field of phraseology is broad and the units studied here are miscellaneous and often different from each other structurally, functionally, semantically and stylistically. A.V.Kunin worked out the theory of phraseological units for the English language and defined them as a stable word-group characterized by a completely or partially transferred meaning: e.g. to take the bull by the horns, a small talk, Hobson`s choice etc. He and otherRussian scholars developed the criteria of distinghquishing phraseological units and described their main properties. Phraseological units should be considered from the point of view of the degree of trasference of meaning, their structure, their communicative function etc. They should be differentiated from other linguistic units: a word, a free word combination and a sentence. The main property of phraseological units is their semantic stability, which includes 4 main aspects: stability of use, semantic complication, formal divisibility and impossibility to be formed according to a structural-semantic pattern.

The first idea (stability of use) means that phraseological units are ready-made units, which are not created every time we need them, but exist in the language as somrthing more or less constant.

Semantic complication and formal divisibility are closesly connected with the problem of distinguishin a phraseological unit from a word and a word combination.

Phraseological units are contrasted to free phrases and so-called semi­fixed combinations. In free combinations the linguistic factors are chiefly connected with grammatical properties of words: a small book. A free phrase permits substitution of any of its elements without se­mantic change in the other element or elements: a small girl, a large book. In semi-fixed combinations there are some restrictions imposed upon types of words which can be used in a given pattern. E.g. the verb go followed by a preposition and a noun with no article: to go to school, to go to market, to go to courts, etc. are used only with nouns of places where defini­te actions or functions are performed.

At the same time no substitution is possible in the phraselogical units: stuff and nonsense, time and again, tit for tat, to and fro because it would destroy the meaning or expressive qualities of the unit. If some substitution is admissible, it is restricted and takes place only in several types of phraseological units, e.g. instead of to cut a poor figure we may say ridiculous, grand etc. a person's behavior.