УДК 81’25.075.8

Язык, речь, речевая коммуникация

The 2nd year student of Foreign philology, Khozhanova A.T.

Candidate of sciences (philology), Karbozova G.K.

Kazakhstan Engineering and Pedagogical University of Nations Friendship, Kazakhstan, Shymkent

PHRASEOLOGY AND LINGUISTIC THEORY

The phraseological world of modern English is great and various. Phraseology from Greek phrasis, "way of speaking" and - logia, "study of" is a scholarly approach to language which developed in the twentieth century. [1] It took its start when Charles Bally's [2] notion of locutions phraseologiques entered Russian lexicology and lexicography in the 1930s and 1940s and was subsequently developed in the former Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries. From the late 1960s on it established itself in (East) German linguistics but was also sporadically approached in English linguistics. The earliest English adaptations of phraseology are by Weinreich (1969) [3] within the approach of transformational grammar, Arnold (1973), [4] and Lipka (1992 [1974]). [5] In Great Britain as well as other Western European countries, phraseology has steadily been developed over the last twenty years. The activities of the European Society of Phraseology (EUROPHRAS) and the European Association for Lexicography (EURALEX) with their regular conventions and publications attest to the prolific European interest in phraseology. Bibliographies of recent studies on English and general phraseology are included in Welte (1990) [6] and specially collected in Cowie & Howarth (1996) [7] whose bibliography is reproduced and continued on the internet and provides a rich source of the most recent publications in the field.

Phraseology as one of the most interesting fields of linguistic study is often mistreated by many linguists because of its close relation to Cognitive Linguistics (CL) which, unlike Chomsky’s Generative Grammar for example, is not rule-governed. Rather, CL focuses on the relationship between the language and the mind. [8]

While the notion of phraseology is a very widespread concept, just as with other linguistic concepts, different authors define it differently, sometimes do not provide a clear-cut definition, or conflate several terms that many scholars prefer to distinguish. However, a closer comparative look at the vast majorities of studies that exist allows for identifying a set of parameters that are typically implicated in phraseological research. [9]

Phraseology is a comparatively young field of linguistics which has only relatively recently become established as a self-contained linguistic discipline. Phraseology is pervasive in all language fields. The phraseology literature represents it as a subfield of lexicology dealing with the study of word combinations.

Along with the term “phraseological unit” generally accepted in our country there exist a lot of other terms, such as: set phrases, word equivalents, idioms. Numerous English dictionaries of idioms contain a wealth of proverbs, sayings, various expressions of all kinds, but, as a rule, they do not seek a reliable criterion to distinguish between free word-groups and phraseological units. The complexity of the problem may be largely accounted for by the fact, that the borderline between free word-groups and phraseological units is not clearly defined.

In linguistics, phraseology is the study of set or fixed expressions, such as idioms, phrasal verbs, and other types of multi-word lexical units (often collectively referred to as phrasemes), in which the component parts of the expression take on a meaning more specific than or otherwise not predictable from the sum of their meanings when used independently. For example, ‘Dutch auction’ is composed of the words Dutch ‘of or pertaining to the Netherlands’ and auction ‘a public sale in which goods are sold to the highest bidder’, but its meaning is not ‘a sale in the Netherlands where goods are sold to the highest bidder’. Instead, the phrase has a conventionalized meaning referring to any auction where, instead of rising, the prices fall.

According to the origin of phraseologisms, a line has been drawn between two areas of investigation, namely, linguistic phraseology understood as “a community’s means of expression” and literary phraseology including “aphorisms, witticism, word combinations with an accidental character, belonging to certain writers, outstanding people”.

There are different definitions of the notion ‘phraseology’ and ‘phraseological unit.’ According to Prof. Kunin A.V., phraseological units are stable word-groups with partially or fully transferred meanings ("to kick the bucket", “Greek gift”, “drink till all's blue”, “drunk as a fiddler (drunk as a lord, as a boiled owl)”, “as mad as a hatter (as a march hare)”).

English and American linguists collect various words, word-groups, other units presenting some interest and describe them as idioms. 'Idioms are one of the most interesting and difficult parts of the English vocabulary. They are interesting because they are colourful and lively and because they are linguistic curiosities. At the same time, they are difficult because they have unpredictable meanings or collocations and grammar, and often have special connotations. Idioms are frequently neglected in general dictionaries and in classroom teaching, because they are considered marginal items which are quaint but not significant. Yet research into idioms shows that they have important roles in spoken language and in writing, in particular in conveying evaluations and in developing or maintaining interactions’, says Collins COBUILD Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs.

Phraseological units or idioms, as most Western scholars call them, represent the most colorful and expressive part of the English language vocabulary. [10]

The problem of phraseology was investigated by a great number of Ukrainian, Russian and western linguists: N. Amosova, I. Arnold, L. Bulahovsky, A. Cowie, R. Glaser, V. Jukov, A. Kunin, R. Moon, L. Palamarchuk, N.Shansky, A. Smirnitsky, L. Smith, V. Vinogradov etc., who possess similar as well as different opinions on the terminology, concept, essential features and classification of phraseological units. [11]

The types of Phraseological units are ways of forming phraseological units, semantic classification of phraseological units, classification of phraseological units according to their origin, structural classification of phraseological units, syntactical classification of phraseological units.

As to the final, and for many researchers probably most important, criterion, the elements of a phraseologism – in whatever way they are distributed across a clause or sentence – are usually assumed to function as a semantic unit, i.e. have a sense just like a single morpheme or word.

References:

1. Knappe, Gabriele. (2004) Idioms and Fixed Expressions in English Language Study before 1800. Peter Lang.

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phraseology - cite_ref-2Bally, Charles (1909 [1951]) Traité de stylistiquefrançaise. Genève: Georg et Cie.

3. Weinreich, Uriel (1969) Problems in the Analysis of Idioms. In J. Puhvel (ed.), Substance and Structure of Language, 23-81. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press.

4. Arnold, I.V. (1973) The English Word Moscow: Higher School Publishing House

5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phraseology - cite_ref-5Lipka, Leonhard. 1992. An Outline of English Lexicology. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.

6. Welte, Werner. (1990) Englische Phraseologie und Idiomatik. Ein Arbeitsbuch mit umfassender Bibliographie. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.

7. Cowie, A.P. & Peter Howarth. (1996) Phraseology - a Select Bibliography. International Journal of Lexicography 9(1): 38–51

8. Dr. Nevena Tanasić’s article.

9. Cf. Howarth (1998:25) for a similar critique of the absence of defining criteria and an alternative proposal.

10. I.V. Zykova. A practical course of English lexicology, 2006

11. T.S. Aleksandrova’s article - Conversational and conventional implicatures as pragmatic means of transferring meaning.