FREE-WORD COMBINATIONS

Definition of a word-group and its basic features

Structure of word-groups Meaning of word-groups Motivation in word-groups

Word-Group

the largest two-facet language unit

consists of more than one word

studied in the syntagmatic level of analysis

Word-Group

the degree of structural and semantic cohesion may vary

e.g. at least, by means of, take place – semantically and structurally inseparable

e.g. a week ago, kind to people – have greater semantic and structural independence

Free-Word Combination

word-groups that have a greater semantic and structural independence

freely composed by the speaker in his speech according to his purpose

Features of Word-groups

Lexical ValencyGrammatical Valency

Lexical Valency (Collocability)

The ability of a word to appear in various combinations with other words, or lexical contexts

e.g. question – vital/pressing/urgent/etc.,

question at issue, to raise a question, a question on the agenda

Lexical Valency (Collocability)

words habitually collocated in speech make a cliché

e.g. to put forward a question

Lexical Valency (Collocability)

lexical valency of correlated words in different languages is different

e.g. flower цветок

garden flowers садовые цветы

hot-house flowers оранжерейные цветы

pot flowers комнатные цветы

Lexical Valency (Collocability)

different meanings of one and the same word may be revealed through different type of lexical valency

e.g. heavy table, book heavy snow, rain heavy drinker, eater heavy sorrow, sleep heavy industry

Grammatical Valency

The ability of a word to appear in specific grammatical structures, or grammatical contexts

Grammatical Valency

the minimal grammatical context in which the words are used when brought together to form a word-group is called the pattern of the word-group

Grammatical Valency

restricted by the part of speeche.g. e.g. an adjective + noun, infinitive,

prepositional groupa kind man, kind to people, heavy to lift limited by the inner structure of the

languagee.g. to propose a plan – to suggest a plan to propose to do smth -

Grammatical Valency

grammatical valency of correlated words in different languages is different

e.g. enter the room - войти в комнату

Classifications of word-groups

according to the distributionaccording to the head-wordaccording to the syntactic

pattern

Word-groups according to distribution

endocentric – – central member functionally equivalent to the whole word-group

e.g. red flower ( I saw a red flower – I saw a flower)

exocentric – – the distribution of the whole word-group is different from either of its components

e.g. side by side, grow smaller, John runs

Word-groups according Word-groups according to the head wordto the head word

nominal groups

e.g. red flower adjectival groups

e.g. kind to people verbal groups

e.g. to speak well

Word-groups according Word-groups according to the syntactic patternto the syntactic pattern

predicative –

have a syntactic structure similar to that of a sentence

e.g. John went, he works

non-predicative –

do not have a structure similar to a sentence

e.g. red flower, running John

Non-predicative and endocentric word-groups

coordinative – –

elements of a word-group are coordinated with each other

e.g. e.g. day and night, do or die

subordinative – –

one member of a word-group is subordinated to the central element

e.g. e.g. red flower, a man of wisdom

Meaning of Word-Groups

lexical meaningstructural meaning

Lexical meaning the combined lexical meaning of the

component words BUT the meaning of the word-group

predominates over the lexical meanings of its components

e.g. atomic weight, atomic warfare

Lexical meaning polysemantic words are used only in one polysemantic words are used only in one

of their meaningsof their meanings

e.g. man and wife, blind man stylistic reference of a word-group may

be different from that of its components

e.g. old, boy, bags, fun – old boy (дружище), bags of fun

Structural meaning

meaning conveyed by the arrangement of components of a word-group

e.g. school grammar – grammar school

Structural meaning

structural and lexical meanings are interdependent and inseparable

e.g. school children – to school children

all the sun long – all the night long, all the week long

Motivation in Word-groups

lexically motivated - - the combined lexical meaning of a group is deducible from the meanings of its components

lexically non-motivated – – the meaning of the whole is not seen through the meanings of the elements

Motivation in Word-groups

lexically motivated

e.g. red flower

lexically non-motivated

e.g. red tape – ‘official bureaucratic methods’

Motivation in Word-groups

e.g. e.g. apple sauce – ‘a sauce – ‘a sauce made of apples’made of apples’

apple sauce – ‘nonsense’ – ‘nonsense’

Motivation in Word-groups

Non-motivated word-Non-motivated word-groups are called groups are called phraseological units or or idioms