Phraseology: Principles of Classification

It should be clear from the previous description that a ph. unit is a complex phenomenon with a number of important features, which can therefore be approached from different points of view. Hence, there exist a considerable number of different classification systems devised by different scholars and based on different principles.

The traditional and oldest principle for classifying ph. units is based on their original content and might be alluded to as "thematic". On this principle, idioms are classified U according to their sources of origin, "source" referring to the particular sphere of human activity, of life, of nature, of natural phenomena, etc. So, L.P.Smith gives in his classification groups of idioms used by sailors, fishermen, soldiers, hunters and associated with the realia, phenomena and conditions of their occupations. In Smith's classification we also find groups of idioms associated with domestic and wild animals and birds, agriculture and cooking.

For e.g. To be all at sea - - to be unable to understand; to be in a state of ignorance or bewilderment about something (e, g. How can I be a judge in a situation in which 1 am all at sea?.

The thematic principle of classifying ph. units has real merit but it does not take into consider­ation the linguistic characteristic features of the ph.units.

The classification system of ph. units devised by Vinogradov was the first classification sys­tem which was based on the semantic principle.

Vinogradov's classification system was founded on the degree of semantic cohesion between the components of a ph.l unit. Units with a partially transferred meaning show the weakest cohesion between their components. Vinogradov classifies phraseological units in to three classes; phraseological combinations, unities and fusions (фразеологические сочетания, единства и сращения).

Phraseological combinations are word-groups with a partially changed meaning. They may be said to be clearly motivated, that is, the meaning of the unit can be easily deduced from the meanings of its constituents.

E.g, to be good at something, to be a good hand at something.

Phraseological unities are word-groups with a completely changed meaning, that is the meaning of the unit does not correspond to the meanings of its constituent parts.

E. g. to lose one's head (= to be at a loss what to do; to be out of one's mind); to lose one's heart to smb. (= to fall in love);

Phraseological fusions are word-groups with a completely changed meaning but, in contrast to the unities, they are demotivated, that is their meaning cannot be deduced from the meanings of the constituent parts; the metaphor, on which the shift of meaning was based, has lost its clarity and is obscure.

E.g. to come a cropper (to come to disaster); at sixes and sevens (in confusion or in disagreement);

The structural principle of classifying ph. units is based on their ability to perform the same syntactical functions as words. In the traditional structural approach, the following principal groups of ph. units are distinguishable:

A. Verbal. E. g. to run for one's (dear) life, to get (win) the upper hand, to talk throughone's flat,

B. Substantive. E. g. dog's life, cat-and-dog life, white lie, tall order

С. Adjectival. E. g. high and mighty, spick and span, safe and sound. In this group the so-called comparative word-groups are particularly expressive and sometimes amusing in their unanticipated and capricious associations: (as) cool as a cucumber, (as) nervous as в cat, (as) weak as a kitten, (as) good as.

D. Adverbial. E. g. high and low (as in They searched for him high and law), by hook or by crook (as in She decided that, by hook or by crook, she must marry him

E. Interjectional, E.g. my God! by Jove! by George! goodness gracious! good Heavens!

Professor Smirnitsky offered a classification system for English ph.units which is interesting as an attempt to combine the structural and the semantic principles.

A. one-summit units, which have one meaningful constituent (e.g. to give up, to make out. to pull out, to be tired, to be surprised);

B. two-summit and multi-summit units which have two or more meaningful constituents (e. g. block art, first night, common sense, to fish in troubled waters).

Within each of these large groups the ph. units are classified according to the category of parts of speech of the summit constituent So, one-summit units are subdivided into: a) verbal-adverbial units equivalent to verbs in which the semantic and the grammatical centers coincide in the first constituent (e.g. to give up) b) units equivalent to verbs which have their semantic center in the second constituent and their grammatical center in the first (e. g. to be tired); c) prepositional-substantive units equivalent either to adverbs or to copulas and having their semantic centre in the substantive constituent and no grammatical centre (e.g. by heart, by means of).

The classification, suggested by Professor A. V, Koonin, is based on the combined structural-semantic principle and it also considers the quotient of stability of ph. units.

Ph. units are subdivided into the following four classes according to their function in communication determined by their structural-semantic characteristics:

1. Nominative ph. units are represented by word-groups, including the ones with one meaningful word and coordinative phrases of the type wear and tear, well and good.

2. Norninative-cornrnunicative ph. units include word-groups of the type to break the ice—the ice is broken, that is, verbal word-groups which are transformed into a sentence when the verb is used in the Passive Voice.

3. Ph. unite which are neither nominative nor communicative include interjectional word-groups.

4. Communicative ph. unite are represented by proverbs and sayings. The classification system includes a considerable number of subtypes and gradations.

№17 Phonetic expressivity and graphical means in stylistics

Not only the meaning of the words is important for our perception of the message, but also the way they sound. According to Galperin, aesthetic function is realized by means of phonetics due to peculiar manner in which phonemes and words are joined together in a phrase, sentence, text. Stylistic phonetics includes the study of euphonic arrangement of the utterance, intonation, rhythm, rhyme, and combination of sounds. Phonetic stylistic devices present the set of sound inventory in which the meaning of a word or the general mood of the text is supported by the sound image. Skrebnev distinguishes 2 branches of stylistic phonetics:

paradigmatic - phonetics of units. It studies the correspondence (discrepancy) b\w form and meaning (sound + sense). The sounds are associated with some images created by our cultural and national background and the peculiarity of sound perception.

syntagmatic - deals with prosody and interaction of speech sounds in sequences. Prosody includes tonality, length, force, volume, stress (emphatic, logic, word, phrasal) - all the components of intonation. Tonality can range from tender, merry soft to harsh, cold, threatening,, reproaching. Emphatic stress helps to show the speaker's attitude to certain facts, his admiration, surprise. As for intonation variants, there exists as many possibilities as there are people and psychological states. In verse rhythm depends on metrical pattern and is usually rapid. Prose is also rhythmically organized by means of repetition of images, of text parallel syntactical constructions.

Euphony (Greek "sweetness of sounds") - produced by long vowels and liquid consonants, or Assonance(vocalic alliteration) - repetition of similar stressed vowels sounds to achieve a particular effect of euphony in the middle or the end of a phrase/line. According to Arnold, assonance is vocalic alliteration ([ei] in maiden, radiant creates an image of sth light and beautiful). The opposite of assonance is dissonance - peculiar arrangement of cacophonous, harsh sounds, their repetition.Another device which serves to create an image in people's minds is called onomatopoeia. It is the combination of speech sounds aiming at sounds produced in nature by objects, people, animals. It is based on metonymy. There are 2 types of onomatopoeia:direct - imitation of natural sounds (bow-wow, splash, mew, whisper, bang),verbalization of extralinguistic sounds:indirect - echo-writing. It doesn't reproduce the sound, but expresses it by means of repetition: Where the water had dripped from the tap in a small pond he sipped with his straight mouth, softly drank through straight gums into his long body, silently (imitation

of a hissing sound). The theory of the sense-independence of separate sounds: it presupposes that sounds speak for

themselves and convey certain meaning: fl] - moving

[o, u] - melancholy, sorrow: gloomy, mourn,doom

[-att-] - particle movement: shatter, scatter

Some linguists (Galperin) don't support it: there are no objective

data in favor of the theory.

Alliteration - repeating and playing upon the same letter. Consonants, especially at the beginning of words, are repeated.. Examples of it can be found in tongue twisters, comic lyrics, book titles ("Pride and prejudice"), set expressions (the last but not the least, now or never, good as gold, forgive and forget,). Consonance - close repetition of identical consonant sounds before or after different vowels: slip-slop

paronomasia- co-occurrence of paronyms (words which are similar in sound, but different in meaning)involves play upon words.

In a versed line a unit of rhythm or a group of syllables forming a metrical unit is called foot - the smallest segment of the line consisting of one stressed and one or two unstressed syllables. Meter refers to the pattern of stressed/unstressed syllables in verse. In English verse meter is based on stress, and Arnold distinguishes 2 types of them:

• strong-stress itteten there are equal spends of time between the stressed syllables within which a different number of syllables can be put. It is characteristic of oral speech.

• syllable-stress meter: introduced by Chasseur. It is the alteration of one stressed syllable and a certain number of unstressed syllables.

There are five possible combinations of stressed and unstressed syllables. A foot of 2 syllables has either the 1st or the 2nd syllable stressed; a foot of 3 syllables has either the 1^st, the 2^nd or the 3^rd syllable stressed. Thus, we have 2 disyllabic varieties of feet (iamb, trochee) and 3 trisyllabic ones (dactyl, amphibrach, anapaest).

rhyme - a complete or partial coincidence of acoustic impressions produced by stressed syllables. Types of rhyme: & according to the position of rhyme in stanza (Arnold's):

1. end rhyme - the most frequent one.

2. internal: / am the daughter of earth and water.

according to the degree of identity (Galperin's):

1. complete (full or perfect) - exact correspondence of sounds

2. incomplete:vowel: flash -fresh -press (only consonants differ);consonant: tail - tool - trouble;dissonant: devil - evil according to the number of identical sounds: poor: buy - cry;rich: gravity - longevity.

+ according to morphological peculiarities:

1. simple (one word): stone - alone\ pray - grey:compound (broken word group): bottom -forgot em - shot im. Such rhymes give theutterance colloquial or humorous touch.

+ according to the position of stress (Skrebnev's):

1. male (masculine, single) - rhymes ending with a stressed syllable: understand - hand,dreams - streams.;female (double) - last syllable is unstressed: duty - beauty, very - merry.;dactylic (triple) - 1 stressed syllable is followed by 2 unstressed ones: tenderly -slenderly, prettily - wittily.

+ according to the position of rhyming lines:

1. adjacent: aab4. couplets: aa

2. crossing: abab5. triple: aaa

3. ring (envelope): abba

Two or more verse lines make a stanza - a verse segment composed of a number lines having a definite measure and rhyming system which is repeated throughout a poem. There are several types of stanza:ballad stanza: contains 4 lines, in which the 1^st and the 4^th have 4 feet (tetrameters), whilethe 2^nd and the 3^rd have 3 feet (trimeters). Only the 2^nd and the 4^th lines are rhymed: abcb.;heroic couplet: rhymed iambic pentameters. by Chasseur. The pattern is aa, bb, cc.;Spenserian stanza: 9 lines (8 iambic pentameters + 1 iambic hexameter): ababbcbcc;ottava rima: an eight-line iambic pentameter of Italian origin (Byron): abababcc;sonnet: 14 lines (iambic pentameters). There exist 3 basic forms of sonnet:sonnet cycle - a series of sonnets devoted to as particular theme or individual.; crown of sonnets - a sequence of 7 sonnets linked to form a "crown" - a panegyric to aperson concerned. The last line of each of the first 6 sonnets is the first line of the followingone, while the 7^th sonnet is made of these repeating lines.;blank verse: 5 unrhymed lines (iambic pentameters). Visual poetry:

1. altar poem - a poem in which the stanzas are so arranged that they form a certain design ona page;

2. pattern poem - lines are arranged to represent the subject of a poem or to suggest action,emotion, feelings.

3. palindrome - a word or a sentence which can be read the same in both directions:

4. acrostic - a poem in which the initial letters of each line make a word when readdownwards.

According to Kukharenko, they serve to convey those type of emotion that in the oral speech are expressed by intonation and stress. Graphic picture of speech doesn't reflect all the peculiarities of pronunciation, but it helps to attract the reader's attention emphasize the most essential details, figures of speech.

Emphatic punctuation (dashes, exclamation and question marks in particular) aims at conveying the emotional coloring of the text, to create emotional pauses, to suggest some implication (irony). Emphatic punctuation is used in many syntactical stylistic devices: suspense serves to express uncertainty, anticipation, embarrassment; aposiopesis - a rhetorical device when the speech is intentionally broken off by the speaker, and the sentence is left unfinished; rhetorical questions. Inverted commas are used to introduce quotations, direct speech, or thoughts of the characters. In addition, they may also imply ironical attitude. Dashes or suspension marks point to a prolonged pause and are often accompanied with time fillers ugh, well, so, er, etc. Even full stops perform their stylistic function. When describing rapidly changing scenes or actions authors break their narration into short sentences. Thus, full stops help to create vivid pictures and convey dynamic character of events. At the same time, the lack of any punctuation marks is even more expressive, and contemporary writers favor this stylistic device (stream of conscious, eternal ties between cultures, generations, etc.)

The changed type (italics, bold type) or spelling are used to indicate the additional stress on the emphasized word or its part. Capital letters also witness the loudness of the voice. Sometimes he letters that should be capitalized remain small.

Graphical fixation of phonetic peculiarities of pronunciation with the ensuing violation of the accepted spelling - graphon - is characteristic of prose only and is used to indicate blurred, incoherent or careless pronunciation caused by temporary (tender age, intoxication, ignorance of the discussed theme) or by permanent factors (social, territorial, educational, etc. status).

2) multiplication: (laaaarge)

3) hyphenation, scanning: (g-irl).

Means of creating visual image

1. division of the text into paragraphs;

2. division of the poem into stanzas

3. pattern-poetry ( стихи):

4) acrostic:

1. First letter of each line spells out a hidden message/ or last letter - telestic.

2. 1^st and the last letters have hidden massage(double acrostic)