Page 58 - 6806

which share with phraseological units their structural stability but
lack their semantic unity and figurativeness (e. g. to go to school,
to go by bus, to commit suicide).
There are two other major criteria for distinguishing between
phraseological units and free word-groups: semantic and
structural. Compare the following examples:
A. C a m b r i d g e don: I'm told they're inviting more
American professors to this university. Isn't it rather carrying
coals to Newcastle? (To carry coals to Newcastle means "to take
something to a place where it is already plentiful and not
needed".)
B. This cargo ship is carrying coal to Liverpool.
The first thing that captures the eye is the semantic
difference of the two wordgroups consisting of the same essential
constituents. In the second sentence the free word-group is
carrying coal is used in the direct sense, the word coal standing for
real hard, black coal and carry for the plain process of taking
something from one place to another. The first context quite
obviously has nothing to do either with coal or with transporting it,
and the meaning of the whole word-group is something entirely
new and far removed from the current meanings of the
constituents. The semantic shift affecting phraseological units does
not consist in a mere change of meanings of each separate
constituent part of the unit. The meanings of the constituents
merge to produce an entirely new meaning (e. g. to have a bee in
one's bonnet means "to have an obsession about something; to be
eccentric or even a little mad"). The humorous metaphoric
comparison with a person who is distracted by a bee continually
buzzing under his cap has become erased and half-forgotten, and
the speakers using the expression hardly think of bees or bonnets
but accept it in its transferred sense: "obsessed, eccentric". That is
what is meant when phraseological units are said to be
characterized by semantic unity. In the traditional approach,
phraseological units have been defined as word-groups conveying

58