Phraseology. Different principles of classification of phraseological units

The vocabulary of a language is enriched not only by words but also by phraseological units (this term was introduced by Soviet linguists). Phraseological units or idioms are completely or partially non-motivated word-groups.

Taking into account mainly degree of idiomaticity (non-motivation) phraseological units may be classified into 3 big groups suggested by Academician Vinogradov:

· Phraseological fusions are completely non-motivated groups (red tape, kick the bucket)

· Phraseological unities are partly non-motivated as their meaning can usually perceived through the metaphoric meaning of the whole phraseological unit (to show one’s teeth = the metaphor meaning of these unit suggest “to take a threating tone”).

· Phraseological collocations are motivated but they are made up of words possessing specific lexical valency which accounts for a certain degree of stability un such word groups. We can say “take a liking” but not “to take hatred”.

This classification has been criticized. Borderline cases between idiomatic and non-idiomatic word-groups are so numerous and confusing that the final decision seems to depend largely on one’s “feeling of the language”.

There are several other ways of phraseological units classification suggested by Professor Smirnitsky, Professor Anosova and Professor Koonin.

Professor Smirnitsky classified phraseological units from so-called functional approach. He assures that phraseological units may be defined as specific word-groups functioning as word equivalents. The fundamental features of phraseological units thus understood are their semantic and grammatical inseparability. e.g. “red tape” is a single semantically inseparable unit and phraseological unit “take place” is grammatically equivalent to a verb. Then he classified phraseological units into noun equivalents (red tape), verb equivalents (to take care), adverb equivalents (in the lay run), adjective equivalents (below the mark) etc.

Professor Anosova used a contextual approach: free word-groups make up variable contexts and the essential feature of phraseological units is a non-variable or fixed context. According to the criteria of context phraseological units are subdivided by Anosova into 2 types: phrasemes and idioms. Phrasemes are two-member word-groups in which one of the members has a specialized meaning dependent on the 2^nd component as in “small hours” (the 2^nd component “hours” serves as the only clue to this particular meaning of the component “small”. The meaning “early” is found only in the given (fixed) context “small hours”). Idioms are distinguished from phrasemes by the idiomaticity of the whole word-group and the impossibility of attaching meaning to the members of the group taken in isolation.

Phraseological units are divided by Koonin into 3 groups:

· Phraseological units proper or idioms – completely or partially non-motivated (to kill 2 birds with one stone)

· Idiophraseomatic units have both literal and figurative meanings (literal meanings are usually found in terminology of professionalism “chain reaction” – цепная реакция (physical term), a word combination with a metaphorical meaning – ряд последовательных сбытий.

· Phraseological units have either literal meanings or phraseomatically bound meanings (e.g. clichés – again and again, safe and sound, to pay attention (“pay” has a phraseomatically bound meaning “обращать”).

Phraseological units of all the groups are characterized by lexical semantic stability.

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