Shekimova Aida, fourth-year student

The Eurasian National University named after L.N.Gumilyev, Kazakhstan

THE SOURCES AND ORIGIN OF PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS IN MODERN ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN LANGUAGES

Tracing back the origin of many English idioms and other phraseological units to their etymological source is very important as it helps to understand the meaning of the inner form phraseologism and, consequently, its actual meaning.

The linguists’ opinion concerning the sources and origin of phraseological units vary greatly and that is naturally enough as the phraseology appears to be a very complex linguistic matter. Nevertheless, the important task for all the linguists working in this linguistic field is joining of efforts and the pooling of interests in revealing the etymological source of phraseological units, for it would contribute a lot to understand the meaning of this or that phraseological unit more profoundly. The works by L.P.Smith, A.V.Kunin, B.A.Larin, L.P.Pastushenko and others revealed many interesting facts concerning the sources and origin of phraseological units. Only in the beginning of the XX-th century preconditions for phraseologyallocation in an independent linguistic discipline have been created. In this process researchesof many linguists have played the important role, such as J.Seidl, Ch.Bally, I.I.Sreznevsky, E.D.Polivanov, L.V.Shcherba, A.V.Kunin, V.V.Vinogradov, B.A.Larin, N.N.Amosova and others. The sources and origin of modern English phraseological units appear to be very diverse. Conventionally, all the phraseological units can be divided into the following groups: indigenously English and borrowed phraseological units.

The idiom a hue and cry having the meaning 'general outcry and alarm, often with shouting, searching, chasing' is originally connected with the fact that the hue and cry was a system for the pursuit and arrest of criminals in which all citizens were obliged to take part, e.g.: "The only thing now was to sit down and wait till the hue and cry had died down and the murderers thought the affair was forgotten." (W. S. Maugham, "Footprints in the Jungle”). In Russian it would be "лови!, держи!".

For the first time the phraseology as an independent linguistic science in the 20^th years of the XX-th century was allocated by an outstanding Russian scientist V.V. Vinogradov. He has studied the phraseological units in respect of speech activity, he has defined the object, the structure of the science and phraseology volume. V.V.Vinogradov defines phraseological unit as the basic object of phraseology.

So, a phraseological unit is a word-group or a sentence with full or partial transformation meaning and with stability at phraseological meaning.

The sources and origin of phraseological units in modern English and Russian languages can be similar. The main sources of phraseological unit is the Bible. Bible is the main literal source of phraseological units. Over the centuries Bible was a widely read and quoted book in England. Number of scriptural constructions and expressions is so high that it is not an easy task to collect and to count them. The following biblical expressions are used in contemporary English: The apple of Sodom- красивый, но гнилой плод; обманчивый успех; Can the leopard change his spots?-(букв. может ли леопард перекрасить свои пятна?); Горбатого могила исправит. The English phraseological units can not be translated into Russian language word-for-word, otherwise it will lose its expressiveness and linguistic curiosity. Here is one more interesting example Rus. «намылить голову» in English would be: haul somebody over the coals. The Russian language has its own psychological, sociolinguistic peculiarities, that’s why the phraseological units can’t be translated word-for-word: плясать под чужую дудку-come under somebody’s influence, submit to the influence of somebody; English to lock the stable door after the horse is stolen, to ride the high horse (means to behave a superior, haughty way), to show one’s teeth (to take a treating tone, show an intention to injure), to wash one’s dirty linen in public (discuss of make on public one’s quarrels) Rus. “выносить сор из избы» because Russian people used to live in the houses called “izba”. To carry coal to Newcastle-возить товар туда, где его и без того много; ехать в Тулу со своим самоваром; заниматься бессмысленным делом (Ньюкасл - центр угольной промышленности) it means to do unnecessary thing.

There have been suggested several classifications of phraseological units. This way, L.P.Smith suggests the classification in accordance with those sources, from which the English language adopted phraseological units. He distinguished idioms derived from the language of sailors, fishers, soldiers, hunters as well as he pointed out idioms, concerning different kinds of domestic and wild animals, birds, nature phenomena; idioms concerning agriculture, kitchen, different kinds of sport, art, parts of human body, etc. According to L.P.Smith there is no clarification of the semantic structure. To him, the persistent word combinations, determined as “idioms” is of interest mainly because they are “verbal anomalies”, “which break grammatical or logical rules. At the same time, Smith tried to demonstrate wealth and multiplicity of English phraseology, to determine from which sources it has penetrated into the general language. L.P.Pastushenko suggests naming such multitude of phraseological units combined on the basis of their logical-subjective, communicative commonality which cover the peculiar sphere of knowledge as phraseo-thematic area, she gives the following classification: 1) firearms; 2) fighting or hostilities; 3) military symbolism; 4) shooting or firing; 5) soldier, rank; 6) guard duty; 7) military tactics.

The one important matter lies in the fact, that all non-English literary borrowings are considered to be the word-for-word translation or calking. They are not used in the loan form; we can not talk about the assimilation process of phraseologisms borrowed from belles-lettres of different countries. The expression “to enrich by phraseologisms” is frequently used in this work. That is not a simple appropriateness, as according to Kunin, “Phraseology-is the treasure house of the language” and the phraseologisms in the language are considered as richness and decoration of the speech. The phraseological units reflect the culture and the way of life of this or that language, they help to make the speech more expressive, colorful and emotional.

The list of the used vocabulary:

1. Alekhina A.I. Idiomatic English. – Minsk: Высшая школа, 1982.

2. Koonin A.V. Anglo-russkiy fraseologicheskiy slovar-izdanie 4-je , M.,1984

3. Koonin A.V. Фразеология современного английского языка. - М.: Международные отношения, 1996.

4. Pastushenko L.P. Английские фразеологические единицы в составе фразеологического поля. Дис. канд. филол. наук. – Киев, 1982.

5. Smith L.P. Фразеология английского языка. – М., 1998.