Word-groups lecture 12 Word-groups vs phraseological units

2. EXOCENTRIC WORD-GROUPS

• 2. EXOCENTRIC WORD-GROUPS
• have no central component and the distribution of the whole word-group is different from either of its members.
• For instance, the distribution of the word-groups side by side, at first, grow smaller is not identical with the distribution of their component-members, i.e. the component-members are not syntactically substitutable for the whole word-group.

TYPES OF MEANING OF WORD-GROUPS

• The lexical meaning –
• the combined lexical meaning of the component words, e.g. a blind man may be described denotationally as the combined meaning of the words blind and man.
• In most cases the lexical meanings of the word-group predominates over the lexical meanings of its components, e.g. blind alley, blind date.
• Polysemantic words are used in word-groups only in one of their meanings. These meanings of the component words in such word-groups are mutually interdependent and inseparable. Semantic inseparability of word-groups treats them as self-contained lexical units.

The structural meaning

• The structural meaning
• of the word-group is the meaning conveyed mainly by the pattern of arrangement of its components, e.g., such word-groups as school grammar and grammar school are semantically different because of the difference in the pattern of arrangement of the component words.
• The structural meaning is the meaning expressed by the pattern of the word-group.

Interrelation of lexical and structural meaning in word-groups

• Interrelation of lexical and structural meaning in word-groups
• The lexical and structural components of meaning in word-groups are interdependent and inseparable. The structural pattern in all the day long, all the night long, all the week long in ordinary usage and the word-group all the sun long is identical. The generalised meaning of the pattern ‘a unit of time’.
• Replacing day, night, week by another noun the sun structural meaning of the pattern does not change. The group all the sun long functions semantically as a unit of time. But the noun sun included in the group continues to carry the semantic value or the lexical meaning that it has in word-groups of other structural patterns (cf. the sun rays, African sun, etc.).