SEMANTIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE POLYSEMOUS LEXEME ENG. FIRE IN THE INTEGRAL STRUCTURE OF PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS (2023)

Abstract

In our article, we focused on the peculiarities of the semantic display of the polysemantic lexeme English. fire in phraseological context and on the reflection of this development in the integral semantic structure of the group of phraseological units with the corresponding key component in the form of a frame, determining for the interpretation of the FIRE concept at the phraseological level. By phraseological context we understand both the internal structure of phraseological units and the integral structure of the corresponding phraseological groups. Having studied idiomatic phrasemes, we found out whether the set of phraseological units with the mentioned lexeme as their key unit constitutes a system-organizing whole and the role of the lexeme Eng. fire in structuring of the corresponding phraseological group. We also tried to determine whether the lexeme we are studying can acquire a phraseologically related meaning, or, when used as part of phraseological units, it simply implements its system of meanings, inherent to it as a unit of the lexical-semantic system and presented in explanatory dictionaries. Our analysis was aimed at more fully elucidating the content of the FIRE concept and its semiotic-model potential. In our article, we find out in what way the specific meaning of the word Eng. fire affect the general meaning of the phraseological unit that includes this word. In this regard, the degree of motivational transparency of the internal form of phraseological units is important, because it is this transparency that allows to correlate certain components of the integral meaning of the phraseme with the corresponding lexemes in its composition. However, idioms differ in this sense, having more or less motivational transparency or being opaque because their motivation is either purely conventional or historically obscured. The analysis of the semantic display of the lexeme Eng. fire at the phraseological level testified that this display is uneven and even selective. Phrase-making activity in the phraseological context of the English language is revealed only by the semantemes “fire, flame” and “making fire”, partially coinciding in terms of their expression of secondary phraseologically related meanings. Regarding the division of the analyzed phraseological units into nominative and predicative, it should be noted that predicative compounds constitute the main array of the grouping. A common feature for the integral semantics of most of them is the designation of a certain situation, which is distinguished by the feature “nature of effective influence”. As we have seen from the examples, this influence can be constructive and destructive, and this contrast is decisive for the semantic structure of the analyzed group. From a quantitative point of view, phrasemes with the meaning of destructive influence predominate, which gives reason to consider this contrast as a privative one, and phrasemes with the meaning of constructive influence as a marked (by virtue of a smaller number) member of this privative correlation. It is worth to mention that in many phrasemes, fire is depicted as a source and even a subject of destructive actions aimed at a person and his environment; but such a source may often not be specified precisely as fire, but instead appears precisely as “something unspecified (generalized) and dangerous”. Much less often, fire appears as a source or tool of constructive influence. The situations described in idioms almost always relate to a person in one way or another, to his relationships with the environment in which he exists.