Билет №14.

Phrase logical units and allusion.

Zeugma restores the literal original meaning of the word, which also occurs in violation of phrase­ological units of different syntactical patterns, as in Galsworthy's remark: "Little Jon was born with a silver spoon in his mouth which was rather curly and large." The word "mouth", with its content, is completely lost in the phraseological unit which means "to have luck, to be born lucky". Attach­ing to the unit the qualification of the mouth, the author revives the meaning of the word and offers a very fresh, original and expressive description.

Allusion an indirect reference, by word or phrase, to a historical, literary, mythological, biblical fact or to a fact of everyday life made in the course of speaking or writing.

Ex: No little Grandgrind had ever associated a cow in a field with that famous cow with the crum­pled horn that tossed the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt, or with that yet more famous cow swallowed Tom Thumb; it had never heard of those celebrities (Dickens - Hard Times). (The meaning that can be derived from the two allusions, one to the nursery rhyme "The House that Jack build" and the other to the old tale "The history of Tom Thumb").