SEMANTIC BACKGROUND OF BINOMIALS WITH FOOD NAMES AS VARIETIES OF COORDINATE PHRASES

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the semantic level of English idiomatic expressions, which linguists distinguish into a separate group of binomials. It is noted that there is no single unified view of these phrases, and most linguists distinguish them as a type of phraseological units. However, binomials differ from other constructions in their formal and grammatical organization. A binomial construction combines two words belonging to a specific lexical and grammatical class and is connected through coordinating relation. It is emphasized that these units are “frozen” coordinate word combinations with copulative relations, from which they have adopted the main parameters and, at the same time, acquired new ones due to transformation. In contrast to free coordinative phrases, binomials cannot be rearranged, changed or supplemented. The analysis has shown that, despite the formal and grammatical openness caused by the specificity of the copulative conjunction and, binomials are inherently semantically closed. It is noted that, unlike ordinary coordinate phrases, the components of a binomial can be service words that do not have lexical meaning by their nature. However, the coordinating relation that connects them determines the acquisition of different semantic shades by such a binomial construction. Therefore, these idiomatic expressions are a vivid example of the close interaction between formal grammatical, semantic, and syntactic levels. Another feature of binomials is the interaction of their constituents: in a free coordinate phrase, the components show equality and independence, while in a binomial expression, the interdependence of the left and right components is clearly traced. Considering the semantic, it is advisable to classify binomials into three groups: 1) those in which the meaning of the binomial is fully motivated by the component composition; 2) idiomatic expressions that, having a direct meaning, can simultaneously acquire a figurative meaning; 3) binomials whose meaning is not motivated by the meaning of their components.