7/27/2019 Lexical Units

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LEXICAL UNITS

A set phrase or fixed phrase is a phrase whose parts are fixed, even if the phrase could be changedwithout harming the literal meaning. This is because a set phrase is a culturally accepted phrase. A set

phrase does not necessarily have any literal meaning in itself. Set phrases may functionas idioms (e.g. red herring) or as words with a unique referent (e.g. Red Sea). There is no cleardividing line between a commonly used phrase and a set phrase.

A collocation is a sequence of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected bychance.

An idiom is a combination of words that has a figurative meaning due to its common usage. An idiom'sfigurative meaning is separated from the literal meaning. There are thousands of idioms and they

occur frequently in all languages.

The term phrasal verb is commonly applied to two or three distinct but related constructions inEnglish: a verb and a particle and/or a preposition co-occur forming a single semantic unit. This

semantic unit cannot be understood based upon the meanings of the individual parts in isolation, butrather it must be taken as a whole. In other words, the meaning is non -compositional and thus

unpredictable. Phrasal verbs that include a preposition are known as prepositional verbs and phrasalverbs that include a particle are also known as particle verbs. Additional alternative terms for phrasalverb are compound verb, verb-adverb combination, verb-particle construction, two-part word/verb,and three-part word/verb (depending on the number of particles), and multi-word verb. 

False friends are pairs of words or phrases in two languages or dialects that look or sound similar,

but differ significantly in meaning. An example is the English embarrassed andthe Spanish embarazada, which does not in fact mean 'embarrassed' but rather 'pregnant'.

An acronym is an abbreviation formed from the initial components in a phrase or a word. Thesecomponents may be individual letters (as in laser ) or parts of words (as in Benelux ). There is nouniversal agreement on the precise definition of various names for such abbreviations nor on written

usage. In English and most other languages, such abbreviations historically had limited use, but theybecame much more common in the 20th century. Acronyms are a type of word formation process, andthey are viewed as a subtype of blending. 

A portmanteau or blend is a combination of two (or more) words and their definitions, into one newword. The word comes from the English  portmanteau luggage (a piece of luggage with twocompartments).

A portmanteau word fuses both the sounds and the meanings of its components, as in smog, coinedby blending smoke and fog, or motel , from motor and hotel .

Most blends are formed by one of the following methods:1.  The beginning of one word is added to the end of the other. For example, brunch is a blend

of br eakfast and l unch.  simultaneous+broadcast → simulcast    smoke+f og → smog 

  spoon+f ork → spork  

  smart+sassy → smassy  

2.  The beginnings of two words are combined. For example, cyborg is a blendof cybernetic and organism.

3. Two words are blended around a common sequence of sounds. For example, theword Californication, from a song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, is a blend

of California and fornication, and the word motel is a blend of mot or and hotel .