5. Set phrases and language creativity

Collocation – such a combination of word which conditions the realization of a certain meaning.

Neologism – a word or word combination that is specially coined to name new object or to express a new concept.

Blocking- is the exclusion of a derivative because a synonym already exists and may itself be a simple or a complex word.(из лекций)

To teach- teacher, to work- worker, but not steeler- thief Phraseological units, or idioms, as they are called by most western scholars, represent what can probably be described as the most picturesque, colourful and expressive part of the language's vocabulary.

Most Russian scholars use the term "phraseological unit" ("фразеологическая единица") which was first introduced by Academician Vinogradov whose contribution to the theory of Russian phraseology cannot be overestimated.

There are some other terms denoting more or less the same linguistic phenomenon: set-expressions, set-phrases, phrases, fixed word-groups, collocations.

The confusion in the terminology reflects insufficiency of positive or wholly reliable criteria by which phraseological units can be distinguished from "free" word-groups.

It should be pointed out at once that the "freedom" of free word-groups is relative and arbitrary. Nothing is entirely "free" in speech as its linear relationships are governed, restricted and regulated, on the one hand, by requirements of logic and common sense and, on the other, by the rules of grammar and combinability. One can speak of a black-eyed girl but not of a black-eyed table (unless in a piece of modernistic poetry where anything is possible). Also, to say the child was glad is quite correct, but a glad child is wrong because in Modern English glad is attributively used only with a very limited number of nouns (e. g. glad news), and names of persons are not among them.

Free word-groups are so called not because of any absolute freedom in using them but simply because they are each time built up anew in the speech process whereas idioms are used as ready-made units with fixed and constant structures(это была Антрушина).

Далее неизвестный мне источник с примесью Антрушиной (про поговорки и прочее –точно она)

The chief focus of previous chapters has been the meaning of single words, whether simple (like book) or complex (like bookish or bookseller). But lexical meaning is not only expressed by single words. It is also conveyed by well-established combinations of words-by set phrases. All phrases are of course made up of two or more words, but those we are now concerned with are not the kind that are put together to fit the needs of the moment, for example, our striped wallpaper, his purple shirt, or her weekend job, but the sort that are repeated and, through constant repetition, stored in our memories as more or less frozen units, for instance, a shrinking violet, pass the buck, gain entry, a narrow escape. So we are entering not so much the field of lexical creativity as the domain of the ready-made.

Which means that we are faced with a difficulty. If our concern is chiefly with phrases that are memorized as wholes, how can they be said to relate to semantics? The answer can be found in two crucial points of contact between semantics and the study of phrases (phraseology). The first is that while set phrases form a separate part of the lexicon (and in fact have specialized dictionaries devoted to them) there are, between words on the one hand, and phrases on the other, many individual connections of the kind we described in the previous chapter as 'meaningful relations'. So, for example, in focus has as its synonyms sharp and clear, while in the open has as its one-word equivalents revealed or disclosed. And just as fashionable is the synonym of in fashion, so unfashionable (the opposite of fashionable, of course) is the synonym of out of fashion. Such meaningful linkages between words and set phrases are commonplace.

A second point of contact between phraseology and lexical semantics concerns the way that phrases with literal meanings develop into idioms. As we saw in Chapter 3, a device commonly used in developing new word-meanings is metaphor. The meanings of a great many phrases evolve in the same way, except that here the whole expression is involved. Take the phrase play one's cards right: to a card-player, this means 'to play one's cards appropriately, to the best advantage'. But by a metaphorical shift it has come to mean 'make the best use of one's assets and opportunities' generally. The literal phrase has become an idiom. When the verb play, incidentally, or the noun card, have to do with card games, there is an array of phrases with developed figurative senses: play one's trump card, for instance, play one's cards close to one's chest, and not be playing with a full deck (a US equivalent of not having all one's marbles.)

Set phrases and set sentences

To carry the discussion a stage further, it will be helpful to set up a simple framework to account for the various types of set expression found in the language. Despite differences over terminology, specialists broadly agree in recognizing a basic division between 'set phrases' which have just been briefly introduced, and which are divided into collocations and idioms, and set sentences, which can be divided into a number of traditional categories, typically of sentence length, including proverbs (make the punishment fit the crime), catchphrases (round up the usual suspects), and slogans (Heineken refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach).

Set phrases and set sentences differ not only because the latter are potentially longer and more complex – look again at the examples just given and compare turn up the heat (idiom) and if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen (catchphrase) – but because they have different uses and convey different kinds of meanings. Set phrases are word-combinations, more or less fixed in form, that function as parts of simple sentences, as can be seen from: a sacred cow, a noun phrase that can function as a subject or object; on the loose, a prepositional phrase that can be an adverbial; and rush one's fences, which fits a verb + object-noun pattern. Set sentences, by contrast, have meanings that largely reflect the way they function, as wholes, in spoken or written communication. The advertising slogan all we do is drive by you, for instance, combines two claims – that we make the car you drive, and that we are always motivated by our customers’ wishes – in a succinct and witty form. But the range of sentence categories we regularly use goes to convey a speaker’s reactions to other people and their messages, which include Are you with me?, You know what I mean, and You must be joking! These are called speech formulae, or ‘gambits’.

Proverbs, catchwords, and formulae

Let us now go back to the major grouping referred to earlier as 'set sentences'. Proverbs form an interesting category, as many have undergone structural changes over the past half-century, while many have virtually disappeared from our vocabularies. Anyone searching the British National Corpus for the proverbs man proposes, but God disposes or one man's meat is another man's poison, for example, will be disappointed. There is no record of either occurring even once in a body of 100 million words. Interestingly, even among those proverbs that do survive, there are many with living heads but chopped-off tails, such as too many cooks, a stitch in time, bolt the stable door. From full sentences they have been reduced to phrases or clauses. Now, it is true that when these truncated forms are used, the unspoken ending is in most cases also implied, as here: too many cooks spoil the broth and a stitch in time saves nine. The part that survives conveys the meaning of the whole. Nevertheless, it seems that complete proverbs are less and less often used, perhaps as a reflection of our unwillingness to take seriously such encapsulations of folk wisdom, or to recognize them as guides to personal conduct.

Catchphrases claim our interest because of the way they come into existence and, in many cases, subsequently take on fresh uses and forms. They commonly originate with a popular entertainer or public figure (when they fulfil much the same function as a signature tune) or a character in a well-known film or television drama series. In the film Casablanca, 'Round up the usual suspects!' was an order given to police officers to arrest a number of people they had often arrested before, not because anyone believed they had committed any crime, but because the police wished to appear active and efficient. For many filmgoers it thereafter became inseparable from the cynical and corrupt police chief (Captain Renault) by whom the words were first spoken and the catchphrase was coined. The meaning of the original expression has broadened, so that it can now refer to the persistent targeting of a wide variety of people or things (as in the following quotation), and not simply helpless refugees:

(1) Excise duties are taxes on specific goods, with cigarettes, booze, and petrol being the usual suspects to be rounded up on Budget Day.

I suggested earlier that the spread of sentence-length items extended well beyond the traditional categories of proverbs, catchphrases, and slogans. Among this wider and less familiar range of set sentences is one without which spoken and written communication would be less smooth and coherent. The term speech formula or 'gambit' is used to refer to these invaluable items. Speech formulae are expressions, typically spanning a whole sentence or clause, that are used to convey a speaker's assessment of other participants and their messages, and generally to ease the flow of discourse. Examples include I beg your pardon, Are you with me?, You know what I mean?, and call it what you like.

What are the distinguishing features of these speech formulae? All four examples can occur as separate sentences (I beg your pardon?, You know what I mean?, and so on) and all are used to perform some kind of 'act' with language. Saying I beg your pardon, for example, may (it has more than one meaning) be a response to something just said by another speaker; specifically, it can function as a request for clarification, as here:

(2) 'We're in trouble if it won't fit in.' 'I beg your pardon, if it won't fit in what?'

Whether the speech formulae appear on their own or not, they typically form part of a verbal interaction. And incidentally, it is not always the case that the formula is a response to something that someone else has said or asked. They are more than likely to be interactive in some other way. Look at this example:

(3) 'Now, these firms, they'd got a certain type of lock that they produced, and it was all done with a system, you know what I mean?

Here, the formula, which is in end position, is addressed to a listener, but it aims to check that he or she has understood the meanings of a certain type of lock and a system, which are not spelt out. So the formula relates both to the hearer and to parts of the language of the speaker. In a final example, the formula if you please is not used to seek for confirmation that the speaker has been understood, but rather is signalling his or her judgement that the preceding claim is absurd or unreasonable and no doubt also that the audience is expected to agree:

(4) The parents want some say in the fate of their children and these days even the children demand to be heard, if you please.

Set phrases and creativity

Clustering at the upper end of the scale of idiomaticity is a group of phrases that are invariable in structure and opaque in meaning. However, some of their near neighbours may also be opaque, and yet allow a few substitutes, as in save one's own neck/skin. Partly because they are so few, the substitutes are seen as wellestablished, memorized parts of the idioms, so that a creative reshaping of one of them can produce the same shock effect as when an invariable phrase is involved.

Quality newspapers are an expected source of such 'nonce' (coined for the occasion) variation. Educated readers, it can be assumed, are linguistically sharp enough to recognize that in the headline Pharaoh's museum hopes to shelter reigning cats and dogs (a reference to plans to dedicate a room in a Cairo museum to mummified royal pets), the well-known idiom is not on the surface but underlies an appropriate recasting of forms and meanings.

Despite the undoubted appeal of such verbal play, however, nonce manipulation of idioms, proverbs, and catchphrases is somewhat rare, though more common in some genres, such as the city pages and sports columns, than others (and altogether more frequent in the tabloid press as a whole). What is much more characteristic of quality newspaper texts is the widespread and unmodified use of collocations.

Of all types of set phrases, it is collocations that make the most significant contribution to educated written proficiency in English. They are, for instance, pervasive in the language of the social sciences, as a number of studies have shown. Some analyses of such texts have put the percentage of collocations as high as 35 per cent of all combinations of a given structural pattern. What explains this preference? One useful property of noncreative collocations is that they represent a neutral ('unmarked') option and help to produce an unobtrusive style that suggests objectivity. They therefore commend themselves to people in public life, including serious commentators and academics, who wish to convey such characteristics in their writing. Collocations play an important role in setting a particular neutral stamp on educated written prose.

The value of the 'marked' option, by contrast (the creatively modified idiom, formula, or catchphrase), is that it draws attention away from the content of a text and on to its form, and in newspaper editorials, for example, provides scope for witty comment and evaluation.