Macedonian Grammar - Phraseology

Phraseology

The group of words that are used in the language as one unit, word construction, are called phraseological units or in Macedonian фразеологизми (frazeologizmi). The phraseological units have special linguistic characteristics and meaning. Within one sentence, the words may be joined together in order to create units of various types. For instance, the word nut can be combined with many adjectives, such as big nut, small nut etc. Moreover, the word nut can be combined with other parts of speech as well, such as with verbs as in the sentence I ate a nut.

These types of combinations are led by the general principles of the phraseology, which states that the words in the sentences can be freely combined. Within these combinations or collocations, each word keeps its original meaning, so the meaning of the whole construction is equal to the meaning of its constituents.

Besides the word construction with loose connections, in Macedonian there are word constructions that are not freely combined, which means they are permanently combined together. As an illustration of these two types of connections are the following sentences, where the noun phrase "hard nut" is used:

• It is a hard nut and it cannot be cracked easily.
• We will be hard nut for our opponent.

In the first sentence, "hard nut" is a common collocation, where the words are connected freely and can be changed with other words in different contexts. On the other hand, in the second sentence the noun phrase "hard nut" (i.e. a hard nut to crack) is an expression that means "strong, unbreakable" and the words are in strong connection and they are not changed with other words. If these words are changed, the meaning of the phrase will be lost.