Samuel Johnson, Introduction to "A dictionary of the English language"- первыйавторсловаря remain in constant circulation over considerable periods idiomatic- containing expressions that are natural to a native speaker of a language. Idiom is a group of words whose meaning is different from the meanings of the individual words. to being relatively transparent (to see the light meaning to understand) is a phrase most learners English do not find too bewildering" (McCarthy, 1990) "Idioms vary from being opaque (непрозрачные) in their meaning (to kick the bucket contains no clues as to its idiomatic meaning of to die), to being semi-opaque (to pass the buck can be paraphrased) This finds reflection in current terminology: Some word-combinations appear to be more literal in meaning than others. The difference between the two is the degree of idiomaticity. In this broad meaning "idiom" stands for both "habitual" or "restricted collocation" and what in the Russian tradition has been described as "фразеологическаяединица". In this reference we have tagged an idiom with one variety of English or another only when the idiom really is restricted to a particular variety of English or to indicate that the idiom originated in that particular variety of English.Idioms are word-combinations or multi-word units (the term in the British tradition) which reveal in their semantic and syntactic structure the specific and peculiar properties of a given language. However, in general, globalization and the effects of film, television and the Internet mean that there is less and less distinction between idioms of different varieties of English. Thus the idiom a drop in the ocean in British and Australian English becomes a drop in the bucket in American English. Other idioms may be used in a slightly different form in different varieties of English. For example, the idiom yellow journalism originated and is used in American English. Some idioms are typically used in one version of English rather than another. Sometimes such idioms today have a meaning that has been altered from the original quotation. For example, at one fell swoop comes from Macbeth and cold comfort from King John. Many idioms originated as quotations from well-known writers such as Shakespeare. Thus, for example, the idiom kick the bucket is indexed under K, while the idiom a ballpark figure is indexed under B. How should one index an idioms reference? Do we list the idiom kick the bucket under K for "kick" or B for "bucket"? Given that Internet users have the option of searching for individual words with the search function, the approach we have taken is to list all idioms in strict alphabetical order, omitting the indefinite and definite articles (a, an, the) and some pronouns if they occur at the beginning of the idiom. Thus the idiom pull your socks up means "improve the way you are behaving" (or it can have a literal meaning) if we change it grammatically to "pull your sock up" (singular sock) or we change its vocabulary to "pull your stockings up", then we must interpret the phrase literally - it has lost its idiomatic meaning. There are two features that identify an idiom: firstly, we cannot deduce the meaning of the idiom from the individual words and secondly, both the grammar and the vocabulary of the idiom are fixed, and if we change them we lose the meaning of the idiom.
0 kommentar(er)
