Phraseological units

Reduplication.

In reduplication new words are made by doubling a stem, either without any phonetic changes as in bye-bye (coll, for good-bye) or with a variation of the root-vowel or consonant as in ping-pong, chit-chat (this second type is called gradational reduplication). Stylistically speaking, most words made by reduplication represent informal groups: colloquialisms and slang. E. g. walkie-talkie ("a portable radio")

3. Back formation. The earliest examples of this type of word-building are the verb to beg that was made from the French borrowing beggar, to burgle from burglar, to cobble from cobbler. In all these cases the verb was made from the noun by subtracting what was mistakenly associated with the English suffix -er. So, in the case of the verbs to beg, to burgle, to cobble the process was reversed: instead of a noun made from a verb by affixation (as in painter from to paint), a verb was produced from a noun by subtraction. That is why this type of word-building received the name of back-formation or reversion.

Later examples of back-formation are to butle from butler, to baby-sit from baby-sitter, to force-land from forced landing, to blood-transfuse from blood-transfu ing.

4. Sound interchange. Sound interchange may be defined as an opposition in which words or word forms are differentiated due to an alternation in the phonemic composition of the root. The change may affect the root vowel, as in food n:: feed v; or root consonant as in speak v:: speech n; or both, as for instance in life n:: live v. It may also be combined with affixation: strong a:: strength n; or with affixation and shift of stress as in ' democrat:: de'mocracy.

5. Extension of proper name

Phraseological units are comparatively stable and semantically inseparable.They r stable,rigid word order,ready made, The essential features of phraseological units are stability of the lexical components and lack of motivation.

The interpretation of the phraseology in Engl.

ü a way of expressing oneself

ü a way in which words and phrases are used especially by particular individuals and group of individ.

Features:

ü they are ready-made unit

ü they are characterised by stability of grammatical structure and lexical components

ü they are idiomatic, transferred. They are colourful, expressive, stylistically marked.

The debatable problems:

1. the problem of the adequate term and its definition (The definition is felt to be inadequate as the concept ready- made units seems to be rather vague. In fact this term can be applied to a variety of heterogeneous linguistic phenomena ranging from word-groups to sentences (e.g. proverbs, sayings, collocation, lexical phrases) and also quotations from poems, novels or scientific treatises all of which can be described as ready-made units)

2. the problem of the lang. material which is reflected to phraseology (narrow and wide approaches in phraseology: some scholars used term word equivalents instead of phrasal units. This narrow understanding. Now many scholars expand a wide approach to phraseology and they include in the phraseologycal sentence idioms, proverbs, saying, clause idioms).

3. 3.the problem of the classification of the lang. material

ü classification of Vinogradova:

1. Phraseological fusions(сращения) are completely non-motivated word-groups, such as red tape — ‘bureaucratic methods’; heavy father — ’serious or solemn part in a theatrical play’; kick the bucket — ‘die’; and the like. The meaning of the components has no connections whatsoever, at least synchronically, with the meaning of the whole group.

2. Phraseological unities are partially non-motivated as their meaning can usually be perceived through the metaphoric meaning of the whole phraseological unit. For EG: to skate of thin ice – рисковать; to sit on the fence – выжидать; a big bug – важная шишка.

3. Phraseological collocations are motivated but they are made up of words possessing specific lexical valency which accounts for a certain degree of stability in such word-groups. In phraseological collocations variability of member-words is strictly limited. We can say take a liking (fancy) but not take hatred (disgust).)

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