The vocabulary of a language is enriched not only by words but also by phraseological units. Phraseological units are word-groups that cannot be made in the process of speech, they exist in the language as ready-made units. They are compiled in special dictionaries. The same as words phraseological units express a single notion and are used in a sentence as one part of it. American and British lexicographers call such units «idioms».
Phraseological units can be classified according to the ways they are formed, according to the degree of the motivation of their meaning, according to their structure and according to their part-of-speech meaning.
Phraseology: different approaches.
Synchronic approach.
Vinogradov – semantic classification based on the degree of the cohesion of the phraseological units. He classified them into 3 groups
1) Phraseological combinations / collocations. They are motivated – we can deduce the meaning knowing the meaning of the words of the phrase, one word having the transfer of meaning (“to have lunch”).
2) Phraseological unities – motivated but the components’ meanings are not direct (not all of them), the metaphore being slight and transparent (“to lose one’s head”).
3) Phraseological fusions – non-motivated word-combinations. One can’t deduce the whole meaning with the help of the components. Full transfer of meaning occurs (“white elephant”).
Structural classification – according to the key word of the phrase:
1) Verbal;
2) Substantive;
3) Adjectival:
4) Adverbial;
5) Interjectional.
Classification by Smirnitsky.
1.one-summit units (phraseological units with one meaningful part) – phrasal verbs, verbal, adverbial phrases (“to be tired of”);
2.multi-summit units (more than one meaningful part) – attributive substantive, verbal, adverbial (“white lie”).
Communicative classification by Kunin.
1) idioms – stable word-groups characterized by complete or partial transfer of meaning;
2) semi-idioms;
3) phraseological units;
4)communicative phraseological units (proverbs, sayings).
