Branches of linguistics. Synchronic vs diachronic approaches to the language study. Lexicology – ‘the science of the word’ Lexicon

The Contextual Classification

Prof. Natalia N. Amosova Основы английской фразеологии (1963)

the contextual approach proceeds from the assumption that individual meanings of polysemantic words can be observed in certain contexts and may be viewed as dependent on these contexts;

a phraseological unit is a unit of fixed context characterised by specific and unchanging sequence of definite lexical components and a peculiar semantic relationship between them;

the two criteria of PhU – specialised meaning of the components and non-variability of context – display unilateral dependence.

According to whether or not one of the components of the whole word-group possesses specialised meaning, PhU are subdivided into:

phrasemes – two-member word-groups in which one of the members has specialised meaning dependent on the second component; the word served as a clue to the specialised meaning of one of the components is habitually used in its central meaning, e.g. small hours, black frost, white lie;

idioms – are semantically and grammatically inseparable units characterised by impossibilty of attaching meaning to the members of the group taken in isolation (as in red tape, dark horse), logical incompatibilty (as in mare’s nest).