Classifications of phraseological units

V.V.Vinogradov. the degree of idiomaticity

1) Phraseological fusions the meanings of the components have no connection with meaning of the whole group. “all ales and skittles безтурботне жи To pull smbs leg white elephant

2) Phraseological unities their meaning can be deduced through metaphoric meaning of the whole phraseological unit. “to show one’s teeth” “to wash one’s dirty linen in public

3) Phrseological combinations are motivated but they are made up of words possessing specific lexical valency. E.g.: “to bear a grudge” (мати зуб на когось) may be changed into “to bear malice” but not into “to bear a fancy” or “to bear a liking”.

We can name them standardized phrases. E.g.: to give help, to win a victory, to make a mistake

They may express: 1) attributive relations: acute pain, cold reason, black sheep

2) object relations: to declare war, to take measures

3) subject-predicative relations: extremes meet, time flies

4) adverbial relations: to freeze hard, to snow heavily, to rain fast.

Here also belong some comparisons: as blue as the sky, as black as a crow, as busy as a bee

We also distinguish phraseological expressions – proverbs, sayings and aphoristic familiar quotations. E.g.: Birds of a feather flock together. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread (A. Pope). Something is rotten in the state of Denmark (W. Shakespeare). Still water runs deep.

N.Amosova. Fixed context phrasemes idioms.

A.Koonin. It is based on the function units fulfill in speech

English lexicography

Compiling dictionaries or lexicons containing an alphabetical arrangement of the words with a definition is called lexicography.

General lexicology – which deals with the general study of words and vocabulary.

Special lexicology – …the description of characteristic peculiarities of the vocabulary.

Historical lexicology – …the evolution of the vocabulary, describing its change and development in the course of time.

There are 2 principal approaches to the study of language material in linguistic science: Diachronic – deal with the changes and the development of vocabulary in the course of time. Synchronic – is concerned with the vocabulary of the language and its existing at a given time.

There are 2 main problems.

1) Selection of words and the number of dictionary entries.

2) Structure and content of a dictionary entry (in different types of dictionaries).

There are some other problems of dictionary compiling:

Place of phraseological units in the dictionary.

Place of homonyms in dictionary entries.

1604 “A Table Alphabeticale, Containing and Teaching the True Writing and Understanding of Hard Usual English Words Borrowed from the Hebrew, Greeke, Latin and French”.

1721 Nathaniel Bailey “Universal Etymological English Dictionary”+pronunciation, etymology.

19^th c. English Philological Society “Oxford English Dictionary” (OED), it but was named “New English Dictionary on Historical Principles”. It has some variants: “The Sorter Oxford English Dictionary”, “The Concise OED” (1911).

Another dictionary created by joined effort – Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary.

American

1798 Samuel Johnson “A School Dictionary”.

1800 Noah Webster (father of American lexicography) showed sights of Americanization.

“American Dictionary of the English Language” appeared in 2 volumes in 1828, revised

The other 3 American dictionaries are: “The Century Dictionary” (1891), “Funk and Wagnall’s Standard Dictionary” (1875), “Random House Dictionary of English Language” (1967).