Фразеологические единицы с количественными числительными в английском языке

Abstract

Without the description of the quantitative definiteness of the reality neither knowledge, nor human practice, nor communication is possible. In English the means of expressing ideas of quantity penetrate all the levels of language structure, phraseology as well. The purpose of the article is to investigate phraseological units with cardinal numerals in the English language. The article is focused on semantic analysis of 65 phraseological units with cardinal numeral component in the English language collected from the English phraseological dictionaries by several authors. There is always a special interest in linguistics to numerical phraseological units. Phraseological studies possess great significance as it displays the interrelation between the language and the society. Numerals take active part in the formation of phraseological units thus creating a large phraseological layer. Fixed expressions with cardinal numerals are more numerous in number than those with ordinal ones and include expressions with a wide range of numerals such as two, four, five, six, eight, fifty, hundred, thousand. They are commonly used in phraseological units to form a ‘human’ concept. The results of the investigation showed that the numbers one and two are the most productive numbers in the English phraseological units. The numbers one, three, six, nine and ten are used in different senses in these set expressions. The numbers seven and eight are unproductive in the English language. The results of this work can be used for further studying the semantics of numerals in phraseological units and identifying of phraseological units with a numeral component.