Текст № 6

Alongside with separate words speakers use larger blocks functioning as whole (consisting › 1 word). In any language there are certain restrictions imposed upon co-occurence of words.

They can be connected with linguistic factors or the ties in the extra-linguistic reality.

There are 3 types of lexical combinability of words:

1) Free combination - grammatical properties of words are the main factor of their combinability. Free combinations permit substitution of any of its elements without semantic change of the other element.

2) Collocations. They are the habitual associations of a word in a language with other particular words. Speakers become accustomed to such collocations.

Very often they are related to the referential and situational meaning of words. Sometimes there are collocations, which are removed from the reference to extra-linguistic reality.

3) Idioms

Idioms are also collocations, because they consist of several words that tend to be used together, but the difference – we can’t guess the meaning of the whole idiom from the meanings of its parts. This criterion is called the degree of semantic isolation. In different types of idioms it is different.

Текст № 7

Many English idioms serve as specialised terms in specific domains: advertising, accounting, banking, business, etc.

In practice it is not only beginners but advanced business students as well who find great difficulty in decoding such terms since, being phraseological units with complete transference of meaning of their components, they are indeed very difficult to identify, even if the learners are experts in business and economics. We would like to press the point that the English language is full of pitfalls for the foreign student - bizarre spelling, illogical rules of grammar - but the most common problem lies in understanding and using the vast array of idioms.

Текст № 8

Seven (семь) is a nice, mystical number. There are seven days of creation, seven virtues, seven deadly sins, seven heavens. Long ago, people believed there were seven planets and seven main arteries in the body.

Russia is part of the sacred seven set. Some семь expressions are from other cultures, such as седьмое небо (seventh heaven). The expression за семью замками/печатями (behind seven locks/seals) is from the Book of Revelations. This is used to refer, either seriously or humorously, to something inaccessible or hidden.

But in other Russian expressions the sacredness of seven seems to have dissipated over the centuries. In many cases, "seven" just means "many." For example, a person with a more mundane profession than wizardry might describe the family business with the expression до седьмого колена (going back many generations, literally "until the seventh knee"). The expression до седьмого пота (literally "to seven sweats") means to do something to the point of exhaustion.

The expression семь пятниц на неделе - "a week of seven Fridays" - refers to people who constantly break their word or change their minds. The origin remains obscure; it may be connected with traditional Friday market days and, in this explanation, the traditional propensity of traders to go back on their word.

Do you know any other phrases that contain the word "seven"?