Occasional Phraseology as a Theoretical Category: Definition, Boundaries, and Analytical Parameters

This paper offers an academic English reformulation of the source study on occasional phraseology and restructures its argument into an independent article focused on conceptualization. The aim is to define occasional phraseology as a distinct analytical category, to delimit it from usual phraseology, free combinations, and contextual variants, and to propose a stable set of interpretive parameters for its study. The research draws on descriptive, contextual, componential, and comparative methods and synthesizes findings from Russian, English, Bulgarian, and Uzbek scholarship. The results show that occasional phraseological units are not arbitrary anomalies but context-dependent derivations built on recognizable prototypes. The paper argues that the most reliable description of the phenomenon must integrate prototype recognition, transformation type, context, and discourse function. Its scholarly value lies in clarifying the theoretical status of occasional phraseology for phraseology, text linguistics, and stylistics.