Partial conversion

There is a kind of double process when first a noun is formed by conversion from a verbal stem, and then it is combined with such verbs as give, make, have, take and others to form a verbal phrase with a special aspect characteristic, e.g. have a wash, a chat, a swim; to give a smoke, a look; give a laugh, a cry.

There many idiomatic prepositional phrases: be in the know, in the long run, of English make, get into a scrape.

Substantivation

There is another way of word-formation that raises many questions about its belonging to conversion. It is called substantivation, e,g. a private, the private's uniform, a group of privates, captive, conser­vative, criminal.

Some scholars do not accept substantivation of adjectives as a variant of conversion, considering conversion as a process limited to the formation of verbs from nouns and nouns from verbs. Some scholars, among them O.Jespersen consider it to be conversion as a word receives a syntactic function which is not its basic one.

L. P. Vinokurova, I. P. Ivanova and others maintain that substantiation in which adjectives have the paradigm and syntac­tic features of nouns differs from conversion, as in substantlvation a new word arises not spontaneously but gradually, so that a word already existing in the language by and by acquires a new syntactic function and changes its meaning as a result of a gradual process of isolation.In plain words a word combination loses a weak noun. Other scoars disagree and say the coining of a new word is at first nothing but a fact of contextual usage, no matter of it is conversion or substantivation. The pro­cess of conversion is impossible outside a context. No isolated word can ever be formed by conversion.

L. P. Vinokurova distinguishes two main types of substantivation:

(1) it may be the outcome of ellipsis in an attributive phrase, e.g. the elastic (cord), or (2) it may be due to an unusual syntactic functioning: e.g. I am a contemplative, one of the impossibles.

The degree of substantivation may be different. Alongside with complete substantivation: the private, the private's, the privates, there exists partial substantivation. In this last case a substantivized adjective or participle denotes a group or a class of people: the blind, the dead, the English, the poor, the rich. Such words are called partially substantivized because they undergo no morphological changes, do not acquire a new paradigm and are only used with the definite article and a collective meaning. Besides they keep some properties of adjectives: e.g.the can be modifled by adverbs.

Besides the substantivized adjectives denoting human beings there are abstract nouns, often grammatical terms: the Singular, the Plural, the Present.

LECTURE VII.

Phraseological Uits of the English Language

1. The notion of phraseology. The main properties of pharaseological units.

2. Classifications of phraseological units

1. The notion of phraseology. The main properties of pharaseological units.

The term phraseology has been discussed for a long time. It was introduced by the Swiss linguist Ch. Bally in 1905 in his work “French Style” for denoting a branch of stylistics studying stable word combinations. There is a great difference in the approach to the problem by Russian and foreign scholars. The word "phraseology" itself has very different meanings in this country and in Great Britain or the United States. In Russian linguistic literature there are several approaches to what should be considered a phraseological unit.

V.V. Vinogradov, A.I. Smirnitsky, N.N.Amosova, A.V.Kunin and others use the same word "phraseology" to denote the branch linguistics studying the word combinations with a transferred meaning. Their ideas of what is such a word combination and how they should be classified differ, but in any case they turned phraseology into a separate branch of linguistics.

V. V. Vinogradov worked with the Russian language and used the term for all expressions with a tranferred meaning irrespective of the structure and properties of the unit. A.I.Smirnitsky called phraseological expressions those which do not possess expressiveness or emotional colouring. I.V.Arnold was of the opposite opinion called so only imaginative, expressive and emo­tional units.

N. N. Amosova insisted on the term being applicable only to fixed con­text units, in which it is impossible to substitute any of the compo­nents without changing the meaning of the whole unit and separate elements. O. S. Akhmanova repeatedly insist­ed on the semantic integrity of such phrases prevailing over the structu­ral separateness of their elements. A. V. Kunin lays stress on the struc­tural separateness of the elements in a phraseological unit, on the change of meaning in the whole as compared with its elements taken separately and on a certain minimum stability.

In English and American linguistics no special branch of study exists and the term "phraseology" is stylistic, meaning "mode of expression, or choice and arrangement of words and phrases charactericstic of some author or some literary work.

The other term widely used is "idiom" which is even more polysemantic. Foreign shcholars apply it to a group of words whose meaning it is difficult to understand from meaning of the components. Moreover, "idiom" may be synonymous to the words "language" or "dialect", denoting a form of expression peculiar to a people, a country, a district, or to one individual. In Russian linguistics idioms are considered within the sphere of phraseology, which means that they are phraseological units of a special kind.

I.V.Arnold prefers to use the term "set expression" as it is more definite because the first element points out its stability, the most important char­acteristic of these units.

In reality the field of phraseology is broad and the units studied here are miscellaneous and often different from each other structurally, functionally, semantically and stylistically. A.V.Kunin worked out the theory of phraseological units for the English language and defined them as a stable word-group characterized by a completely or partially transferred meaning: e.g. to take the bull by the horns, a small talk, Hobson`s choice etc. He and other Russian scholars developed the criteria of distinghquishing phraseological units and described their main properties. Phraseological units should be considered from the point of view of the degree of trasference of meaning, their structure, their communicative function etc. They should be differentiated from other linguistic units: a word, a free word combination and a sentence. The main property of phraseological units is their semantic stability, which includes 4 main aspects: stability of use, semantic complication, formal divisibility and impossibility to be formed according to a structural-semantic pattern.

The first idea (stability of use) means that phraseological units are ready-made units, which are not created every time we need them, but exist in the language as somrthing more or less constant.

Semantic complication and formal divisibility are closesly connected with the problem of distinguishin a phraseological unit from a word and a word combination.

Phraseological units are contrasted to free phrases and so-called semi­fixed combinations. In free combinations the linguistic factors are chiefly connected with grammatical properties of words: a small book. A free phrase permits substitution of any of its elements without se­mantic change in the other element or elements: a small girl, a large book. In semi-fixed combinations there are some restrictions imposed upon types of words which can be used in a given pattern. E.g. the verb go followed by a preposition and a noun with no article: to go to school, to go to market, to go to courts, etc. are used only with nouns of places where defini­te actions or functions are performed.

At the same time no substitution is possible in the phraselogical units: stuff and nonsense, time and again, tit for tat, to and fro because it would destroy the meaning or expressive qualities of the unit. If some substitution is admissible, it is restricted and takes place only in several types of phraseological units, e.g. instead of to cut a poor figure we may say ridiculous, grand etc. a person's behavior.

A phraseological unit and a word

It is necessary to establish criteria for distinguishing phraseological units not only from free phrases but from compound words. Here we speak about divisibility, identity of syntactic function and equivalece to word. One of these cri­teria is the formal integrity of words, which has been mentioned. It is opposed to the formal divisibility (lack of structural integrity) of phraseological units, which was worked out by N.N.Amosova, A.I. Smirnitsky and A.V.Kunin.

Morphological divisibility is evident when one of the elements (but not the last one as in a compound word) is subjected to morphological change. N.N. Amosova gives the following examples. He played second fiddle to her in his father's heart. She disliked playing second fiddle.

A. V. Kunin shows the possibility of morphological changes in adjectives forming part of phraseological units: He's deader than a door­nail. Our legs are being pulled.

The other moment that is important is all the authors agree that phraseologicl units (for the most part) represent one member of the sentence, but opinions differ as to whether this means that there are no syntactical ties within set expressions themselves.

The criteria of semantic stability means that the meaning of the phraseological unit is constant and not understandable from the meaning of the components.

Another essential moment is the so-called equivalece to the word. Two types of substitution tests can be useful in showing us the points of similarity and difference between the words and phraseological units 1) a whole phraseological unitis replaced by a syn­onymous word in such a way that the meaning of the utterance remains unchanged, e.g. he was in a brown study->he was gloomy. 2) only an element of the phraseological unit is replaced, e.g. (as) white as chalk->(as) white as milk-> (as) white as snow. In this second type it is the phraseological unit that is retained, although its compo­sition or referential meaning may change.

The possibility of this substitution permits us to regard this set expres­sion as a word equivalent.

The main point of difference between a word and a set expression is the divisibility of the latter into separately structured elements, which are contrasted to the structural integrity of words. Although equivalent to words in being introduced into speech ready-made, a phraseologism is different from them because it can be resolved into words while words are resolved into morphemes. In compound words the process of integration is more advanced.

Phraseological units can be neutral, but most of them have a developed connotative aspect of meaning(emotive, expressive and stylistic connotations).