Structural meaning.

As with polymorphemic words word-groups possess not only the lexical meaning, but also the meaning conveyed mainly by the pattern of arrangement of their constituents. Two compound words made up of lexically identical stems may be different in meaning, because of the difference in the pattern of arrangement of the stems. For example, the meaning of such words as dog-house and house-dog is different though the lexical meaning of components is identical. This is also true of word-groups. Such word-groups as school-grammar and grammar-school are semantically different because of the difference in the pattern of arrangement of the component words. In the example discussed above, the structural meaning of the word-group may abstracted from the group and described as quality-substance meaning.

This is the meaning expressed by the pattern of the word-group but not by either the word school or the word-grammar.

It follows that we have to distinguish between the structural meaning of its constituents.

Lecture 10

Phraseological Units and their classification.

Proverbs, sayings and cliche.

It has been repeatedly pointed out that word-groups viewed as functionally and semantically inseparable units are traditionally regarded as the subject matter of phraseology. It should be noted, however, that no proper scientific investigation of English Phraseology has been attempted until quite recently. English and American linguists as a rule confine themselves to collecting various words, word-groups and sentences presenting some interest either from the point of view of origin style, usage, or some other feature peculiar to them. These units are habitually described as idioms but no attempt has been made to investigate these idioms as a separate class of linguistic units or a specific class of word-groups. The term itself phraseological units to denote a specific group of phrases was introduced by Soviet linguists and is generally accepted in our country.

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