Set phrases and language creativity.

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.)

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14