VI Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2014

It has been observed that common and special indexes of stability are characteristic of different classes of phraseological units (PUs) which enables them to be reproduced in a ready-made way. We maintain after A.V. Kunin that the minimal phraseological stability is formed by the four common indexes of stability, namely: 1) stability of use as an indicator of the fact that the PU is a unit of language, a public property in a given language not an individual expression used by this or that author [Алехина 1979: 99], 2) semantic complicateness that reveals itself in different ways in PUs of different classes, 3) discreteness of PU componential structure, 4) impossibility of forming the PU according to the structural-semantic model of a variable combination of words [Кунин 1964: 49].

Evidently, those characteristics of stability form the minimum phraseological invariant, i.e. the minimum combination of constant elements both in the way of form and in the way of content as A.V. Kunin argued and proved.

The fact is that any would-be phraseological unit has the stage of potential idiomaticity [Семенова, Федуленкова 1996: 67], without which the origin of the PU would be impossible. Potential phraseologisms, leaving the frameworks of unique use and getting the required elements of stability, (for example, the stability of use, leading to the appearance of their phraseological abstraction) [Кунин 1996: 156; Fedulenkova 2009: 42], become the units of the language. I.e., as in any other process, gradual accumulation of the quantitative changes leads, by means of leap, to the fundamental qualitative changes. A potential PU can become a language unit only if it stops being the private property and becomes the commonproperty, i.e. a regularly reproducible formation in the speech of the whole nation or its part, getting the social approbation in such a way. This process takes place thanks to the use of the phraseological units in different contexts of discourse.

Obvoiusly, the main law of the phrase-building process consists in that the potential PU goes through different stages of development depending on the material which becomes the basis of the would-be phraseologism. Thus the three-stage process of development is characteristic of the phraseological units, built from variable word combinations [Кунин 1996: 49]:

1) a variable word combination burn one’s fingers (обжечьпальцы), which is built according to generative structural-semantic model: burn one’s hand, leg, nose, etc.;

2) a potential phraseologism burn one’s fingers (обжечьсяначем-л.) – the first individual author’s use of the given word combination. The phrase is transformed: metaphor is based on the similarity of an action: I do not care for burning my fingers in a quarrel (“Guardian”, 1713, № 108).

3) a phraseological unit burn one’s fingers(обжечьсяначем-л.):

– After all, you must admit that my advice was good! – Very good. – And the wretched boy ought to have burnt his fingers. – Well, he hasn’t (W.S. Maugham).

In contrast to the prototype [Федуленкова 1997: 81] the verb in the PU combines only with the word fingers, which excludes regular generative structural-semantic modeling, which is characteristic of the variable prototype. In the process of communication the prototype is cut off from the structure of the generative structural-semantic model, and the PU is reproduced in a ready-made form.

In fact, the part of the prototype may be played not only by language units or variable word combinations, but by «different associative relationships: historical, folk, textual, i.e. by the fund of common knowledge, connected with historical traditions, facts, realities, folk conception, religious beliefs and their attributes…» as G.S. Grigoryeva puts it [Григорьева 1985: 56].

To sum it up we would like to press the point that the relations between the phraseological unit and its prototype may be different. First of all it depends upon the characteristics of the prototype itself and then on the phraseological unit.

References

Алехина А.И. Фразеологическая единица и слово: К исследованию фразеологической системы. – Минск: Изд-во Белорус. ун-та им. В.И. Ленина, 1979.

Григорьева Г.С. Фразеологические единицы с зоонимами в аспекте теории номинации (на материале современного английского языка): Дис. … канд. филол. наук. – Одесса. 1985.

Кунин А.В. Курс фразеологии современного английского языка: Учеб. для ин-тов и фак. иностр. яз., 2-е изд., перераб. – М., 1996.

Кунин А.В. Основные понятия фразеологии как лингвистической дисциплины и создание англо-русского фразеологического словаря: Дис. … д-ра филол. наук. – М., 1964.

Семенова Ю.В., Федуленкова Т.Н. Потенциальная и собственно фразе­ология: проблемы толкования и адекватного перевода (на материа­ле публицистических и рекламных текстов) // Вопросы теории и практики пере­вода: Материалы семинара / Пензенский гос. пед. ун-т им. В.Г. Белинского, Приволжский Дом знаний. – Пенза, 1996. – С. 67-70.

Федуленкова Т.Н. Генетический прототип – основа на­ционально-культурной специфики фразеологических единиц // Россия и Запад: диалог культур: Материалы 3-й международной конф. / Моск. гос.ун-т. – Вып. 4. – М., 1997. – С. 81-88.

Fedulenkova T. Phraseological Abstraction // Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural Approaches to Phraseology: ESSE-9, Aarhus, 22-26 April 2008 / T. Fedulenkova (ed.). – Arkhangelsk; Aarhus, 2009. – P. 42-54.

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