Volume 12, Issue 1 -

Most researchers associate the beginnings of phraseological studies with Charles Bally (1909) and Soviet studies, especially with V. V. Vinogradov (e.g. 1944; 2001 [1947]), and with English and German studies (e.g. Burger 1973; Rothkegel 1973). However, this article will show that phraseology actually has a centuries-long tradition, at least as far as some languages, including Italian, are concerned. For example, for the Spanish historical phraseological tradition it is worth mentioning Montoro del Arco (2012) and Olímpio de Oliveira Silva (2020). As the Spanish tradition has already been much studied, it will not be further investigated in this paper, although some Spanish “historical phraseologiae” have also been found (such as in the Italian-Spanish works by Franciosini 1620 and the plurilingual work by Pielat 1673). First, I will briefly show what “phraseology” means according to a modern conception, and what it meant originally. The development of the term is traced using some old rediscovered “phraseologiae”, which also have relevance to phraseography and phraseodidactics.

A morphemic phraseme is a phraseme (= a constrained combination of linguistic signs) composed of morphemes that are part of the same wordform. Like a lexemic phraseme, a morphemic phraseme has a segmental signifier. All logically possible types of morphemic phrasemes are presented and illustrated: morphemic idioms, collocations, nominemes and clichés. Formally, these can be phraseologized complex stems, phraseologized complex affixes and phraseologized wordforms. A syntactic phraseme is a phraseme that includes at least two minimal syntactic subtrees and whose signifier is non-segmental (it involves prosody or an operation). All syntactic phrasemes are idioms. A syntactic idiom must be distinguished from 1) phrases described by means of semantically loaded surface-syntactic relations; 2) phrases consisting of a lexical unit taken together with its actants; 3) lexemic phrasemes consisting of “light-weight” words, such as Rus. ˹ nu i ˺ [X]! lit. ‘Well and [X]’ = ‘What an amazing X!’, and 4) lexemic phrasemes with syntactic pecularities. The notion of fictitious lexeme , necessary for designating some syntactic idioms (those that are expressed only by prosody), is introduced. An illustrative list of 29 Russian syntactic idioms is presented, as well as the lexical entries for several Russian syntactic idioms.

This paper presents the results of a corpus-based analysis of a special type of modification of the English ( as ) Adj as NP similes. The modification involves filling the property slot with a cognate noun-adjective compound, i.e., a compound adjective consisting of the original adjective and the noun representing the original source of comparison, and inserting a new source of comparison into the construction ( red as blood vs blood-red as a raw steak ). Our data come from three sources: the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), the iWeb Corpus, and material published on the Google website. Using quantitative methods we first explored whether there is a relationship between various distributional and formal features of the “original” as -similes and their likelihood of exhibiting this type of modification behavior. We then performed a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the semantic and, to a lesser extent, discourse-related features of authentic examples of this type of modification. Our results indicate that while these modifications are not abundant, the as -similes that have been found to modify in this way are significantly different from the as- similes that have been found not to modify in this way, on a number of formal and distributional features. The analysis of the semantic and discourse-related features of the modifications themselves revealed (i) the typical semantic domains of the three nominal entities featured in the modified simile: the original source, the new source, and the target, including the semantic fit among the domains of those entities; (ii) the typical semantic domains of the properties for which the three nominal entities are compared, including the semantic fit among the domains of those properties; and (iii) the typical text varieties accommodating these modifications. The latter results confirm, and to some extent elaborate on, some earlier findings about the semantic and discourse-related profiles of similes at large.

When looking at expressions of negation/rejection in Spanish, the conjunction ni is one of the most prolific words. However, the extent of locutions employing ni has not been widely analyzed. For this reason, we conducted a comparative descriptive examination of discourse markers of rejection and refusal for three different dialectal variants of Spanish: those of Spain, Colombia and Mexico. The participants completed a survey to evaluate their familiarity with some of these pragmatic expressions and to provide new ones. Results show that speakers of these dialectal variants all use the most common markers that start with ni , but also other phrases not recorded in many of the available sources. This paper aims to broaden the horizon of work on phraseological units of negation, which are often difficult to gather and study in depth because of their dialectal variability, colloquial use, and, in some cases, short lifespan.

This paper deals with the functioning of expressive and communicative formulas of modern German in computer-mediated discourse. The set phrases analysed are pre-formed sentence-value word combinations that serve as a means of expression of various speech intentions and emotions. These linguistic units are known to evade a uniform classification scheme, with boundaries between different groups being indistinct. The set phrases considered in this work are viewed as a functional-semantic field which includes communicative and expressive formulas and some mixed types. By discussing their cultural specificity – provided by units containing symbolic components, as well as by entities in various areas of national life, and fixed phrases of obscure literary origin – I attempt to explore their intertextual potential for further contribution to studies in intercultural communication. Expressivity, intertextuality, multimedia impact and interactivity have been defined as constitutive characteristics of computer-mediated discourse. The units discussed keep the tone of asynchronous online communication humorous and help to establish communicative closeness. In online media, the language game comes to the fore: a common phenomenon is semantic transformation often performed as simultaneous actualisation (ambiguity) of literal and idiomatic meaning, causing additional communicative effects. In combination with the informative part of a headline, these units act as emotional and evaluative indicators of media texts. Due to its technological features, internet communication allows easy combination of visual and verbal channels of information, and so there is frequent play between language images and digital images, especially in photo and video hosting services. My analysis of different online genres has shown that in internet communication, the core of the functional-semantic field (i.e. the most frequently used units) acquires added discursive value. The universal nature of their creative use, appeal, entertainment and community-building functions was also ascertained.

The present paper attempts to describe the divergences between nearly synonymous phrasal verb/simplex pairs from court trials dating back to the Late Modern English period (LModE). The intention was to evaluate the effects that each verb form might exert in discourse, interpreting the lexical choice as functionally linked to the contents of the legal-lay discourse, that is the discourse between lay people and professionals in the courtroom (Heffer 2005: xv). Research to date has highlighted how the choice of one form or another needs to be explained in terms of register and degree of expressiveness (Bolinger 1971: 172; McArthur 1989: 40; Hiltunen 1999: 161; Claridge 2000: 221). However, no studies have yet evaluated the difference between phrasal verbs and simplexes from a phraseological perspective, or reflected on how their use is functionally linked to the communicative needs in courtroom settings. The study was conducted on the Late Modern English-Old Bailey Corpus (LModE-OBC), a self-compiled corpus that covers the century 1750–1850 and that includes a selection of trials drawn from The Proceedings of the Old Bailey , London’s Central Criminal Court.