Lexical and grammatical properties of verbal phraseological combinations in English and Russian

Phraseological combinations constitute a significant proportion of all types of phraseological units in both English and Russian. They form an intermediate link between free word combinations and phraseological unities. The expansion of the combinatorial potential of the core component of phraseological combinations leads to their convergence with free word combinations, while the loss of the lexical autonomy of an element with a phraseologically bound meaning accelerates the transition of a phraseological combination to a phraseological unity. This article is devoted to a comparative analysis of the lexical and grammatical properties of verbal phraseological combinations in English and Russian. This review aims to identify the similarities and differences between phraseological and free word combinations in terms of grammar, as well as to justify the position of phraseological combinations on the periphery of the language's phraseological stock. Verbal phraseological combinations, selected using a continuous sampling method from explanatory, translation, and phraseological dictionaries have served as the material for the research. Traditional methods of analyzing phraseological units have been used: a comparative method, continuous sampling, dictionary definition analysis, contextual analysis, and phraseological description. The study has revealed similarities in syntactic links between the components of phraseological combinations and free word combinations. A verb within a phraseological unit retains the same grammatical characteristics inherent in a verb in a variable combination, as well as the ability to form syntactic links with nouns. A noun within a phraseological combination expresses its constant attributes, including its belonging to a specific lexical-semantic category. The difference is expressed in the presence of informative complementary relationships in the phraseological combinations of both languages resulting from the verb's inability to autonomously express its meaning, i.e., the lack of lexical self-sufficiency of the verbal component.

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