Lecture 6 The vocabulary of n language as a System (continued)

6. The problem of definition of phraseological word combination.

Phraseological units, or idioms, as they are called by most western scholars, represent what can probably be described as the most picturesque, colourful and expressive part of the language's vocabulary.

Phraseology is a kind of picture gallery in which are collected vivid and amusing sketches of the nation's customs, traditions and prejudices, recollections of its past history, scraps of folk songs and fairy-tales. Quotations from great poets are preserved here alongside the dubious pearls of philistine wisdom and crude slang witticisms, for phraseology is not only the most colourful but probably the most democratic area of vocabulary and draws its resources mostly from the very depths of popular speech.

The ambiguousness of idioms may lead to an amusing misunderstanding, especially for children who are apt to accept words at their face value.

Little Johnnie (crying): Mummy, mummy, my auntie Jane is dead.

Mother: Nonsense, child! She phoned me exactly five minutes ago.

Johnnie: But I heard Mrs. Brown say that her neighbours cut her dead.

(To cut somebody dead ― to rudely ignore somebody; to pretend not to know or recognise him.)

Puns are frequently based on the ambiguousness of idioms:

Isn't our Kate a marvel! I wish you could have seen her at the Harrisons' party yesterday. If I'd collected the bricks she dropped all over the place, I could build a villa.

(To drop a brick ― to say unintentionally a quite indiscreet or tactless thing that shocks and offends people.)

V. H. Collins writes in his Book of English Idioms: In standard spoken and written English today idiom is an established and essential element that, used with care, ornaments and enriches the language.

Used with care is an important warning because speech overloaded with idioms loses its freshness and originality. Idioms, after all, are ready-made speech units, and their continual repetition sometimes wears them out: they lose their colours and become trite clichés. On the other hand, oral or written speech lacking idioms loses much in expressiveness, colour and emotional force.

In modern linguistics, there is considerable confusion about the terminology associated with these word-groups. Opinions differ as to how phraseology should be defined, classified, described and analyzed. Most Russian scholars use the term phraseological unit (фразеологическая единица) which was first introduced by Academician V.V. Vinogradov. The term idiom widely used by western scholars has comparatively recently found its way into Russian phraseology but is applied mostly to only a certain type of phraseological unit.

There are some other terms denoting more or less the same linguistic phenomenon: set-expressions, set-phrases, phrases, fixed word-groups, collocations, etc. The term set phrase implies that the basic criterion of differentiation is stability, of the lexical componenets and grammatical structure of word-groups.

The term idiom generally implies that the essential feature of the linguistic units is idiomaticity or lack of motivation.

The term word-equivalent stresses not only semantic but also functionul inseparability of certain word groups, their aptness to function in speech as single words.

The confusion in the terminology reflects insufficiency of positive or wholly reliable criteria by which phraseological units can be distinguished from free word-groups.

It should be pointed out that the freedom of free word-groups is relative and arbitrary. Nothing is entirely free in speech as its linear relationships are governed, restricted and regulated, on the one hand, by requirements of logic and common sense and, on the other, by the rules of grammar and combinability. One can speak of a black-eyed girl but not of a black-eyed table (unless in a piece of modernistic poetry where anything is possible). Also, to say the child was glad is quite correct, but a glad child is wrong because in Modern English glad is attributively used only with a very limited number of nouns (e. g. glad news), and names of persons are not among them.

Free word-groups are so called not because of any absolute freedom in using them but simply because they are each time built up anew in the speech process whereas idioms are used as ready-made units with fixed and constant structures.

The word phraseology has very different meanings in this country and in Great Britain or the United States. In linguistic literature the term is used for the expressions where the meaning of one element is dependent on the other, irrespective of the structure and properties of the unit (V.V. Vinogradov); with other authors it denotes only such set expressions which do not possess expressiveness or emotional colouring (A.I. Smirnitsky), and also vice versa: only those that are imaginative, expressive and emotional (I.V.Arnold). N.N. Amosova calls such expressions fixed context units, i.e. units in which it is impossible to substitute any of the components without changing the meaning not only of the whole unit but also of the elements that remain intact. O.S. Akhmanova insists 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 has a stylistic meaning.

The essential features of phraseological units are: a) lack of semantic motivation;

b) lexical and grammatical stability.

As far as semantic motivation is concerned phraseological units vary from motivated (by simple addition of denotational meaning) like a sight for sore eyes and to know the ropes, to partially motivated (when only one of the words is used in figurative meaning) or to demotivated (completely non-motivated) like tit for tat, red-tape.

Phraseological stability is based upon:

a) the stability of use;

b) the stability of meaning;

c) lexical stability;

d) syntactic stability;

e) rhythmic characteristics, rhyme and imagery.

Lexical and grammatical stability of phraseological units is displayed in the fact that no substitution of any elements whatever is possible in the following stereotyped (unchangeable) set expressions, which differ in many other respects: all the world and his wife, heads or tails, first night, to gild the pill, to hope for the best, busy as a bee, fair and square, stuff and nonsense, time and again, to and fro.

In a free phrase the semantic correlative ties are fundamentally different. The information is additive and each element has a much greater semantic independence. Each component may be substituted without affecting the meaning of the other: cut bread, cut cheese, eat bread. Information is additive in the sense that the amount of information we had on receiving the first signal, i.e. having heard or read the word cut, is increased, the listener obtains further details and learns what is cut. The reference of cut is unchanged. Every notional word can form additional syntactic ties with other words outside the expression. In a set expression information furnished by each element is not additive: actually it does not exist before we get the whole. No substitution for either cut a figure can be made without completely ruining the following: