Экзаменационный билет № 4

1. Classification of phraseological units

The term "phraseological unit" was introduced by Soviet linguist (Виноградов) and it's generally accepted in this country. It is aimed at avoiding ambiguity with other terms, which are generated by different approaches, are partially motivated and non-motivated.

The first classification of phraseological units was advanced for the Russian language by a famous Russian linguist Виноградов. According to the degree of idiomaticity phraseological units can be classified into three big groups: phraseological collocations (сочетания), phraseological unities (единства) and phraseological fusions (сращения).

Phraseological collocations are not motivated but contain one component used in its direct meaning, while the other is used metaphorically (e.g. to break the news, to attain success).

Phraseological unities are completely motivated as their meaning is transparent though it is transferred (e.g. to shoe one’s teeth, the last drop, to bend the knee).

Phraseological fusions are completely non-motivated and stable (e.g. a mare’s nest (путаница, неразбериха; nonsense), tit-for-tat – revenge, white elephant – expensive but useless).

But this classification doesn’t take into account the structural characteristic, besides it is rather subjective.

Prof. Смирнитский treats phraseological units as word’s equivalents and groups them into: (a) one-summit units => they have one meaningful component (to be tied, to make out); (b) multi-summit units => have two or more meaningful components (black art, to fish in troubled waters).

Within each of these groups he classifies phraseological units according to the part of speech of the summit constituent. He also distinguishes proper phraseological units or units with non-figurative meaning and idioms that have transferred meaning based on metaphor (e.g. to fall in love; to wash one’s dirty linen in public).

This classification was criticized as inconsistent, because it contradicts the principle of idiomaticity advanced by the linguist himself. The inclusion of phrasal verbs into phraseology wasn't supported by any convincing argument.

Prof. Амазова worked out the so-called contextual approach. She believes that if 3 word groups make up a variable context. Phraseological units make up the so-called fixed context and they are subdivided into phrases and idioms.

2. Procedure of morphemic analysis

Morphemic analysis deals with segmentable words. Its procedure flows to split a word into its constituent morphemes, and helps to determine their number and type. It's called the method of immediate and ultimate constituents. This method is based on the binary principle which allows to break morphemic structure of a word into 2 components at each stage. The analysis is completed when we arrive at constituents unable of any further division. E.g. Louis Bloomfield - classical example:

ungentlemanly

1. un-(IC/UC) +gentlemanly (IC) (uncertain, unhappy)

2. gentleman (IC) + -ly (IC/UC) (happily, certainly)

III. gentle (IC) +man (IC/UC) (sportsman, seaman)

IV. gent (IC/UC) + le (IC/UC) (gentile, genteel)

The aim of the analysis is to define the number and the type of morphemes.

As we break the word we obtain at any level only 2 immediate constituents, one of which is the stem of the given word. The morphemic analysis may be based either on the identification of affixational morphemes within a set of words, or root morphemes.