Курс лекций по лексикологии английского языка для студентов факультетов иностранных языков

Such phrases as woman and child, day and night, do or die are classified as 
coordinative. Both members in these word-groups are functionally and semantically 
equal. 
Subordinative word-groups may be classified according to their head-words 
into nominal groups (red flower), adjectival groups (kind to people), verbal groups (to 
speak well), pronominal (all of them), statival (fast asleep). The head is not 
necessarily the component that occurs first in the word-group. In such nominal word-
groups as e.g. very great bravery, bravery in the struggle the noun bravery is the head 
whether followed or preceded by other words. 
The lexical meaning of the word-group may be defined as the combined lexical 
meaning of the component words. Thus the lexical meaning of the word-group red 
flower may be described denotationally as the combined meaning of the words red 
and flower. It should be pointed out, however, that the term combined lexical meaning 
is not to imply that the meaning of the word-group is a mere additive result of all the 
lexical meaning of the component members. As a rule, the meaning of the component 
words are mutually dependant and the meaning of the word-group naturally 
predominates over the lexical meanings of its constituents. 
Word-groups possess not only the lexical meaning, but also the meaning 
conveyed by the pattern of arrangement of their constituents. Such word-groups as 
school grammar and grammar school are semantically different because of the 
difference in the pattern of arrangement of the component words. It is assumed that 
the structural pattern of word-group is the carrier of a certain semantic component 
which does not necessarily depend on the actual lexical meaning of its members. In 
the example discussed above school grammar the structural meaning of the word-
group may be abstracted from the group and described as "quality-substance" 
meaning. This is the meaning expressed by the pattern of the word-group but not by 
either the word school or the word grammar. It follows that we have to distinguish 
between the structural meaning of a given type of word-group as such and the lexical 
meaning of its constituents. 

The lexical and structural components of meaning in word-groups are 
interdependent and inseparable. The inseparability of these two semantic components 
in word-groups can be illustrated by the semantic analysis of individual word-groups 
in which the norms of conventional collocability of words seem to be deliberately 
overstepped. For instance, in the word-group all the sun long we observe a departure 
from the norm of lexical valency represented by such word-groups as all the day long, 
all the night long, all the week long, and a few others. The structural pattern of these 
word-groups in ordinary usage and the word-group all the sun long is identical. The 
generalised meaning of the pattern may be described as "a unit of time". Replacing 
day, night, week by another noun the sun we do not find any change in the structural 
meaning of the pattern. The group all the sun long functions semantically as a unit of 
time. The noun sun, however, included in the group continues to carry its own lexical 
meaning (not "a unit of time") which violates the norms of collocability in this word-
group. It follows that the meaning of the word-group is derived from the combined 
lexical meanings of its constituents and is inseparable from the meaning of the pattern 
of their arrangement. Two basic linguistic factors which unite words into word-groups 
and which largely account for their combinability are lexical valency or collocability 
and grammatical valency. 
Words are known to be used in lexical context, i.e. in combination with other 
words. The aptness of a word to appear in various combinations, with other words is 
qualified as its lexical collocability or valency. 
The range of a potential lexical collocability of words is restricted by the inner 
structure of the language wordstock. This can be easily observed in the examples as 
follows: though the words bend, curl are registered by the dictionaries as synonyms 
their collocability is different, for they tend to combine with different words: e.g. to 

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