The phenomenon of variability in English phraseology of biblical origin: usual lexical and grammatical variants

Bakina A. D.

The study of phraseological units of biblical etymology in the aspect of their variability has recently become increasingly significant, as the fact of wide use of phraseological units derived from biblical texts and stories in different types of discourse is noted. The diversity of variants of biblical phrases requires identifying, organising and structuring the types of their variation. The aim of the research is to identify new variants of biblical phraseological units that are widely used in different types of discourse presented in the British National Corpus (BNC) and News on the Web (NOW), namely: in media texts, in texts of historical, political and cultural fields and also in the texts of fiction. The analysis of selected phraseological units of biblical origin allowed us to identify the following types of variants: simple variants and complex variants (e.g. substantive-quantitative variants, adjectival-quantitative variants, verbal-quantitative variants) of phraseological units. Within each of the given groups, a division into usual and occasional variants is made. Simple variants are represented by lexical variants (including substantive variants, prepositional variants, prepositional-substantive variants, attributive variants, verbal variants); grammatical variants (including morphological variants and morpho-syntactical variants).

Keywords:biblical phraseology, phraseological units of biblical origin, phraseological variability, variant, invariant, simple and complex variants, usual and occasional variants, lexical and grammatical variants.