STRUCTURAL, SEMANTIC AND GRAMMATICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS WITH COMPONENT DENOTING WEAPON IN ENGLISH

Abstract

Purpose. The purpose of the research is to define structural, semantic and grammatical features of the Phraseological Units (PhU)with the component denoting weapon in the English language. It is realized through determining the corpus of PhUs with the componentdenoting weapon in English, developing their semantic-grammatical classification and describing their most productive structuralmodels in each semantic-grammatical category.

Methods. The study is characterized by the integrated application of general and specific research methods. General scientificmethods analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, logical operations definition and classification were used for empirical dataprocessing. As to research methods specific for linguistics, the descriptive method allowed to comprehensively represent the results,the method of internal interpretation was involved in the process of dividing the collected data into semantic-grammatical classes.Within the structural approach, the method of immediate constituents was applied for building structural models of PhUs. The elementsof the quantitative analysis ensured the objectivity and accuracy of the obtained results.

Results. Defining the notion weapon made it possible to establish the criteria for data collection. The corpus of the analyzed dataincludes the English PhUs with the component denoting the general concept of weapon (arms, weapon), defensive weapon, cold weapon,fire weapon, their constructive parts and service ammunition. According to the semantic-grammatical classification, the PhUs fall into semantic-grammatical classes: verbal, substantive, adverbial and adjective PhUs, within which the verbal class is the most widespread.In each semantic-grammatical class, the most productive structural models are determined and the type of syntactic connection betweenthe components of the models is described. Verbal PhUs with the component denoting weapon are mainly subordinate phrases formedaccording to the model V+N. The highest number of substantive PhUs are phrases with an attributive relation between the coreand the dependent components (Adj+N). The most typical structural model of adverbial PhUs is Prep+N+N. Adjective PhUs are oftencomparative phrases with a comparative component in their structure (Adj+Conj+N).

Conclusions. The corpus of English PhUs with the component denoting weapon is formed by the PhUs with the componentdenoting the general concept of weapon, types of weapons, their parts and service ammunition. According to the structural-semanticclassification, the analyzed PhUs are divided into structural-semantic classes: verbal, substantive, adverbial and adjective PhUs, amongwhich the verbal class is dominating. The most productive structural model for verbal PhUs is V+N, for substantive PhUs – Adj+N, foradverbial PhUs – Prep+N+N, and for adjective PhUs – Adj+Conj+N.