Occasional usage of phraseological units of modern English with the component "time" in novels by the American writer Irwin Shaw

The article presents language material for a seminar or a special class on semantics and stylistics of set units for students of philology trained to be teachers of English. The opening part provides information on theoretical issues through a review of works by Russian philologists about Irwin Shaw's novels. The practical part examines the contexts of the author's usage of set expressions of the modern English language with the component "time". The contexts were extracted from four most famous novels of the author (The Young Lions (1948), Rich Man, Poor Man (1969), Nightwork (1975), Bread Upon Waters (1981)), a total of 2062 pages. The contexts under study (about forty) are divided into groups according to the stylistic type of occasional (author's) transformations of set expressions. The following stylistics methods are considered: the insertion of an additional component, the replacement of a component, the repetition of a component, and the inversion or the change of word order. The component insertion clarifies the manifestation degree for the characteristic presented by the meaning of a set expression. The component replacement intensifies or weakens the meaning of the whole expression. The repetition of a component increases the impressiveness. The change of word order inside a set expression gives colorfulness and extra sense. The final part of the article notes the peculiarities of the author's style in the usage of the set expressions described. It is concluded that all the examined transformations of set expressions with the component "time" can be characterized by the systemic nature of lexical changes. One can find them in texts by numerous writers as well as in everyday speech. The creativity and the author's "specialty" are minimized. Factual material and conclusions of this small research may be applied in teaching such a separate aspect of semantics as the use of set expressions in modern English.