DOI: https://doi.org/10.36719/2789-6919/55/83-89
Ali Gasimov
Nakhchivan Teachers Institute
PhD student
https://orcid.org/0009-0003-9826-3553
aliisa666@yahoo.com
Semantic Functions of Phraseological Units in Modern English
Abstract
The study of the semantic features of phraseological units in modern English yields valuable scholarly insights for lexical semantics, discourse organization, language learning, and translation theory. Research in phraseology reveals cultural differences, a shared idiomatic heritage, and universal conceptual metaphors. The emergence of large-scale corpora and computational tools has ushered in a qualitatively new stage in phraseological studies. Corpus linguistics enables the identification of frequency patterns, collocational tendencies, and diachronic changes in the use of idioms. Computational phraseology, in turn, contributes to the advancement of fields such as natural language processing, machine translation, sentiment analysis, and automatic language generation models.
Despite these advances, issues such as defining clear boundaries between phraseology and syntax, categorizing borderline cases, and developing universal typologies remain unresolved and continue to be relevant. Future research needs to integrate cognitive, corpus-based, and computational approaches, thereby expanding the scope of phraseological studies toward multimodal and intercultural discourse. The development of phraseological units in contemporary English poetry highlights the dynamic relationship between language and culture. As poets continue to modify and innovate these expressions, new insights emerge into the evolving nature of communication and meaning. Phraseological units, once perceived as fixed combinations, have become flexible and multifunctional tools for contemporary poets, enabling them to explore identity, history, and the complexities of modern life. In this way, they play a decisive role in the ongoing evolution of poetic language and in the process by which poetry reflects and shapes understandings of the world. These issues are subjected to scholarly and theoretical analysis in the present study.
Keywords: language, word, expression, phraseological unit, semantics, style