I Phraseology as a science

According to Rosemarie Gläser, a phraseological unit is a lexicalized, reproducible bilexemic or polylexemic word group in common use, which has relative syntactic and semantic stability, may be idiomatized, may carry connotations, and may have an emphatic or intensifying function in a text.

History of the development of phraseology

Gabriele Knappe gives a quick look at the history of phraseology. Phraseology is a scholarly approach to language which developed in the twentieth century. It took its start when Charles Bally's notion of locutions phraseologiques entered Russian lexicology and lexicography in the 1930s and 1940s and was subsequently developed in the former Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries. From the late 1960s on it established itself in (East) German linguistics but was also sporadically approached in English linguistics, too. The earliest English adaptations of phraseology are by Weinreich (1969; within the approach of transformational grammar), Arnold (1973), and Lipka (1974). In Great Britain as well as other Western European countries, phraseology has steadily been developed over the last twenty years. The activities of the European Society of Phraseology (EUROPHRAS) and the European Association for Lexicography (EURALEX) with their regular conventions and publications attest to the prolific European interest in phraseology. With regard to bibliographical publications, the voluminous bibliography by Joachim Lengert (1998–1999) is an inventory of studies on phraseology (in a wide sense) in Romance philology “from the beginning until 1997". It comprises 17,433 titles. Bibliographies of recent studies on English and general phraseology are included in Welte (1990) and specially collected in Cowie/Howarth (1996) whose bibliography is reproduced and continued on the internet and provides a rich source of the most recent publications in the field.

Phraseology is a science, about phraseological units, which are firm word combinations with complicated semantical structure.

Prominent linguist, Professor E.D.Polivanov, first put the question abaut phraseologies as a linguistical discipline. He considered that phraseology “ will occupy firm position (like phonetics, morphologies etc.) in linguistical literature in future-when in consequent stating the varied problems our science is deprived, will be a casual gap’’.

The works of V. V. Vinagradov promoted the appearance a numerous works on phraseologies in different languages. Such accumulation of systematized facts is one of the premises of the creation of phraseology as a linguistical discipline.

Priority in separation of phraseology as a separate linguistical discipline belongs to the former science.

In forming the phrase, the human factors plays an enormous role, since suppressing majority of phraseological units are connected with human being, with varied sphere of his activity. Phraseological units fill the lexical system of the language, which cannot completely provide the description of human activity, and in most cases are single indication of human, characteristics, his activities, conditions situations etc. phraseology is a treasure of the language. The reflections of the history and folklore are found in phraseological units, originality of its culture and the way of living. A phraseological unit often carries brightly national nature or colour.

Phraseology as a science reveals the peculiarities of the phraseological units and defines their place among the other units of the language. In addition, semantic, structural, grammatical, expressive-stylistic characteristics of phraseological unit, peculiarities of their use, classification, consideration sources of the ways of the renewing the phraselogical fund of the language are studied. The tasks of the historical phraseology are the study of their origin, also studying various changes of semantics, structure, lexical composition, stylistic characteristics of phraseological units. The phraseological units are accepted as a firm word combination. As a special type of language unit, phraseological unit possess specific features and as structural division, constancy of components, nature of grammatical structure, equivalence to the word.

All the phraseological units are higher than a word, have a dismembered structure, and divided on components. Phraseolgical units are formally correlative with word. For phraseolgical units constancy of component and stability of “lexical’’ composition is typical. Each phraseolgical unit is grammatically structured. It falls into one or another grammatical category and depending on this possesses full or incomplete set of the paradigmatic forms.

Phraseolgical unit is more complex language unit, than word, in structural and in semantic spheres. However, for majority of them functional vicinity to word is characteristic. Semantic wholeness is a constancy of components. The structure of the phraseological units defines other important particularity of the phraseolgical unit approaching them with. This means that in system of the language they exist as ready made units that is they are not made in speech process, but are extracted from memory and are used in that lexical meanings, grammatical forms and functions, which are to express.

Among phraseological units, it is possible to emphasize two groups, sayings and proverbs. Mono semantics is typical for proverbs. The polysemies of proverbs do not exist in English.

The phraseological combinations, including saying and proverbs, are used as expressive means of the language. If they have some changes, than they act as a stylistic device. These changes of the form can be of different nature: from cut-in of on determination in combination to full destruction of phraseological unit and reconstruction main, direct meaning in phraseological joining.

There by, phraseological unit is reproducible phrase in speech; which have its own meanings, constant components and grammatical structure, more often equivalent of a word.

Phraseologies are vastly more complex units, than a word. The particularities of the phraseologies are their differentiation from variable combinations of the words, analysis of their meanings.

Semantic structure of the phraseological units is formed with interaction of their lexical components. We sall compare some words in free uae and in composition of the phrase. Therefore, variable word-combination shows one’s face means, “показать свое лицо”. In process, word-combination gains the meaning “появится”

appear = move + nearer ( into view).

Among many components of the semantic structure of the word the word show (bring forward, expose, exhibit to view, produce for inspection, allow top seen, appear and etc) there is a component corresponding meaning of the word appear completely falls into semantic structure of the unit ‘show one’s face.’ In meaning face (front of head, from forehead to chin, outward show, aspect) also comes to light the positional meaning “show” and potential meaning “движения” and “направления и движения”: face - front part of anything - main entrance (coming/moving/or going in/nearer). As you can see, potential meaning of the word show and face are transformed in the main and differential meaning of the phraseological unit. The metaphoric re- interpreted wprd-combination due to its internal image has gained the connotation meaning, in particular colloquial colouring and ironic estimation: and it’s God blessing he came too, what with you, afraid to show face down at the Post Office.

The other example: phrase give smb the slip means, “сбежатъ, покинутъ без предупреждения”  (escape =move + away + from smb+ unexpectedly)

Among many components of the semantic structure of the word, give (hand over bestow, render, grant, deliver, put forth oneself) there is component “from”, meaning removing (the potential meaning of the word give and differential meaning of the phraseological unit).

In semantic structure of the word slip and main meaning of the phraseological unit, importance of the phrase was formed because of recomprehension of the word - combination, in which has occurred the redistribution of the meaning: familiar - colloquial stylistic colouring, irony or disapproval:

Trying to give us the slip, was ye, you pup!

Given semantic analysis prove that in base to making phraseology, can lie any semantic sign of the subject or phenomena surrounding reality, finding the reflection in semantic structure as word-combinations as a whole, or separate words. Connotational and functional stylistic meanings are defined by contents of the internal image of the phrase, as well as by the nature of the semantic shift in it.

In process of making phraseological units, word-combinations may change their meaning.

For full understanding the specifics of phraseological meaning, it is important to distinguish not only internal semantic connections, but also structural-syntactical ones. Peculiarity of these connections. The comparision of the semantic structures of the contraposition, subservience, inconsistency (were used definitions of phraseological and explanatory dictionaries). For intance: to drag one’s feet – move (meaning) + along (the differential meaning ‘направление движения“), (the semantic component “вперед”) + by foot ( the differential maening “ способ перемешения”), (the semantic component “ пешком” + very (the differential meaning “усиления действия”), (the semantic component “крайней степени” + slowly (the differential meaning “темп”) (the semantic component “медлителность” + from tiredness (the potential meaning “физическое состояниеб движущегося лица при перемещении”) (the semantic component “усталость”) + functional stylistics meaning (literal bookish) + connotational meanning of “ экспрессивность”.

Revealing only paradigmatic connections cannot completely open essence of phraseological meaning. For phraseological unit it is important to study whole complex of the syntagmatic connections. The big part of phraseological units, as is known, is homonymous to word-combination on structure, which they are built. So it is very important to study the interaction of the phrase and context. Only realization in speech gives the true notion about particularity of the using the phrase, nature of its meaning. Semantic connection not only are taken into account, but also connections of the indication i.e. connection between sign and detonate. These connections are complex and changeable, since at expression of the thoughts in speech same detonate can be marked differently (flee – show the heels to smb. cut and run etc.) On the other hand, the same indication (the sign) can mark different denotate.

The study of the external phraseological connections helps to distinguish the true Semantic contents one same indication. We shall consider the phrase stretch one’s legs:

He sat down and streched his legs out on another chair

The Alderman got out, as he said, to stretch his legs up the hill

So, in the first example “sat down” and “out on another chair” show that we deal with variable word-combination “вытянуть ноги”, in the second – “got out” and “up the hill” prove phraseological peculiarity of the phrase – “прогуляться, размять  ноги”. It is obviously homonymous phenomena.

The development of the polysemy of the phraseological units reveals itself in expansion of combinability mainly. Semantic and dialectical associations of the broad abstract notion with concrete figurative notion give the phraseological units a possibility to realize carrying of its name on different subjects and phenomena within one notion. However, this creates the possibility in new contextual condition to find new meaning or its tone on the base of the same image. If change of the contents of the phrase occurs within the notion on the same level of the abstractions, than appears only colouring of importance. We shall compare two sentences with phrase make headway – move along (with difficulty) (“продвигаться вперед” с трудом продвигаться вперед):

A sudden fear struck him and he turned half against the current fighting with every reserve of straight to hold his position and at the same time make same head-way.

In the meanwhile we had been making headway at a good pace.

The Pointers “ fighting, straight ” in the context of the first sentence realizes the meaning“ c трудом продвигаться вперед ”, word “ at a good pace”, in the second sentence removes the semantic tone “ c трудом ” in “ make haedway”, etc. potencial meaning “ преодоление препятствия ” can sometimes actualize under attention of the speech situation. The phrase increases that bring to the expansion of its semantics.

Revealed paradigmatic features and syntagmatic connection of phraseological units witnesses of close interaction of these connections on phraseological level.

Under paradigmatic consideration of meaning of phraseological units, whole semantic structure is taken into account, the total complex of differential meaning, connotational functional-stylistic and distributional signs, either as their place in corresponding semantical places. Syntagmatics realizes only one meaning of the phraseological unit or tone of its meaning. In syntagmatic plan phraseological unit is characterized only as member of one synonymous row and semantic field.

Change of the external phraseological connections brings to the change of the paradigmatic connections of the phraseological unit, to gain its new meaning.

Therefore, phraseological unit can become the member of the various semantical-phraseological paradigms. All this witnesses the systematized peculiarities of phraseological unit, about potential ability to constant development and renewing the phraseological fund of the language.

Alongside with separate words speakers use larger blocks functioning as whole (consisting › 1 word). In any language there are certain restrictions imposed upon co-occurrence of words.

They can be connected with linguistic factors or the ties in the extra-linguistic reality.

Three types of lexical combinability of words:

1. Free combination Grammatical properties of words are the main factor of their combinability.

Free word combinations are structurally and semantically unstable. EG: a good man; a good and reliable man; a better man

In free word combinations, the meaning  of a whole is obtained by summing the meanings of the constituent  words. Still, always there are semantic constraints for compatibility even in free word combinations. For example, for  the verb to eat, it is expected  that  dependent  (direct object) will be certain  kind  of food, etc.  Thus,  some  words have  a broader compatibility than the other, for example, to see can be combined with practically any physical object, while to read only with something that contains written material (some metaphoric usages are possible also), etc. 

Ex.: I’m talking to you. You are writing.

Free combinations permit substitution of any of its elements without semantic change of the other element.

2. Collocations

For  denoting  some  “important”  word  combinations,  a  term  collocation  is  used. 

There is no commonly accepted definition of collocation.

In a strict sense, only idioms and lexical functions are collocations because they contain the information  that cannot  be deduced. Nevertheless, this contradicts to common practice, when  frequent word combinations are also considered collocations. In NLP tasks, a dominating approach for defining collocations is based on the mutual information of words. We can see that some pairs of words have high conditional  probability, i.e., if we encounter one word in the text, then the probability to encounter  the other word is relatively high; while the conditional probabilities of the majority of randomly chosen word pairs are very low. It is called mutual information. This is purely statistic point of view that ignores the semantic properties of word combinations. In many works, collocations (in the sense of mutual information)  are detected automatically In some syntactic heuristics are used additionally  for filtering the obtained collocations. Nevertheless, these methods ignore the overwhelming majority of word combinations including lexical functions and idioms that do not have sufficiently high frequency

Ex.: to commit a murder

Bread & butter

Dark night

Blue sky

Bright day

They are the habitual associations of a word in a language with other particular words. Speakers become accustomed to such collocations.

Very often they are related to the referential & situational meaning of words. Sometimes there are collocations, which are removed from the reference to extra-linguistic reality. (collocations involving, colour words)

Ex.: to be green with jealousy

       Red revolution

3) Idioms

An idiom (Latin: idioma, "special property", f. Greek: ἰδίωμα – idiōma, "special feature, special phrasing", f. Greek: ἴδιος – idios, "one’s own") is a combination of words that has a figurative meaning, due to its common usage. An idiom's figurative meaning is separate from the literal meaning or definition of the words of which it is made.^[1] Idioms are numerous and they occur frequently in all languages. There are estimated to be at least 25,000 idiomatic expressions in the English language.

Idioms are also collocations, because they consist of several words that tend to be used together, but the difference –  we can’t guess the meaning of the whole idiom from the meanings of its parts.

This criterion is called the degree of semantic isolation. In different types of idioms – it is different.

The following sentences contain idioms. The fixed words constituting the idiom in each case are bolded

a. She is pulling my leg. - to pull someone's leg means to tease them by telling them something untrue.

b. She took me to the cleaners. - to take someone to the cleaners means to cause them to lose a lot of money.

c. When will you drop them a line? - to drop someone a line means to phone or send a note to someone.

d. You should keep an eye out for that. - to keep an eye out for something means to watch for it.

e. I can't keep my head above water. - to keep one's head above water means to manage a situation.

Each of the word combinations in bold has at least two meanings: a literal meaning and a figurative meaning. Pulling someone's leg means either that you literally grab their leg or yank it, or figuratively, it means that you tease them by telling them a fictitious story. Such expressions that are typical for a language can appear as words, combinations of words, phrases, entire clauses, and entire sentences. Idiomatic expressions in the form of entire sentences are called proverbs. If they refer to a universal truth e.g.

f. The devil is in the details.

g. The early bird gets the worm.

h. Break a leg.

i. Waste not, want not.

Ex.: to cry a blue murder = to complain loudly

In linguistics, idioms are usually presumed to be figures of speech contradicting the principle of compositionality. This principle states that the meaning of a whole should be constructed from the meanings of the parts that make up the whole. In other words, one should be in a position to understand the whole if one understands the meanings of each of the parts that makes up the whole. The following example is widely employed to illustrate the point:

Fred kicked the bucket.

Understood compositionally, Fred has literally kicked an actual, physical bucket. The much more likely idiomatic reading, however, is non-compositional: Fred is understood to have died. Arriving at the idiomatic reading from the literal reading is unlikely for most speakers. What this means is that the idiomatic reading is, rather, stored as a single lexical item that is now largely independent of the literal reading.

In phraseology, idioms are defined as a sub-type of phraseme, the meaning of which is not the regular sum of the meanings of its component parts John Saeed defines an idiom as collocated words that became affixed to each other until metamorphosing into a fossilised term This collocation of words redefines each component word in the word-group and becomes an idiomatic expression. Idioms usually do not translate well; in some cases, when an idiom is translated directly word-for-word into another language, either its meaning is changed or it is meaningless.

When two or three words are often used together in a particular sequence, the words are said to be irreversible binomials, or Siamese twins. Usage will prevent the words from being displaced or rearranged. For example, a person may be left "high and dry" but never "dry and high." This idiom in turn means that the person is left in their former condition rather than being assisted so that their condition improves. Not all Siamese twins are idioms, however. "Reading, writing, and arithmetic" is a frozen trinomial, but it is usually taken literally.

Prof. A.I. Smirnitsky worked out structural classification of phraseological units, comparing them with words. He points out one-top units which he compares with derived words because derived words have only one root morpheme. He also points out two-top units which he compares with compound words because in compound words we usually have two root morphemes.

Among one-top units he points out three structural types:

           a) units of the type “to give up” (verb + postposition type);  

To back up – to support;  

To drop out – to miss, to omit.  

b) units of the type “to be tired”. Some of these units remind the Passive Voice in their structure but they have different prepositions with them, while in the Passive Voice we can have only prepositions «by» or «with»: 

To be tired of; 

To be surprised at.

There are also units in this type which remind free word-groups of the type “to be young”: