phraseology

The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject. Please help improve the article with a good introductory style. (October 2009)

Phraseology appeared in the domain of lexicology and is undergoing the process of segregating as a separate branch of linguistics. The reason is clear – lexicology deals with words and their meanings, whereas phraseology studies such collocations of words (phraseologisms, phraseological units, idioms), where the meaning of the whole collocation is different from the simple sum of literal meanings of the words, comprising a phraseological unit. F.e. ‘Dutch auction’ is not an auction taking place in Netherlands. The meaning of this phraseological unit refers to any auction, where instead of rising, the prices fall (compare “Dutch comfort”, “Dutch courage”, “Dutch treat” reflecting complicated historical factors). Phraseological units are (according to Prof. Kunin A.V.) stable word-groups with partially or fully transferred meanings ("to kick the bucket", “Greek gift”, “drink till all's blue”, “drunk as a fiddler (drunk as a lord, as a boiled owl)”, “as mad as a hatter (as a march hare)”).

According to Rosemarie Gläser, a phraseological unit is a lexicalized, reproducible bilexemic or polylexemic word group in common use, which has relative syntactic and semantic stability, may be idiomatized, may carry connotations, and may have an emphatic or intensifying function in a text [Gläser 1998: 125].

History of the development of phraseology

Gabriele Knappe gives a quick look at the history of phraseology [Knappe 2004: 4]. Phraseology is a scholarly approach to language which developed in the twentieth century. It took its start when Charles Bally's notion of locutions phraseologiques entered Russian lexicology and lexicography in the 1930s and 1940s and was subsequently developed in the former Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries. From the late 1960s on it established itself in (East) German linguistics but was also sporadically approached in English linguistics, too. The earliest English adaptations of phraseology are by Weinreich (1969; within the approach of transformational grammar), Arnold (1973), and Lipka (1974). In Great Britain as well as other Western European countries, phraseology has steadily been developed over the last twenty years. The activities of the European Society of Phraseology (EUROPHRAS) and the European Association for Lexicography (EURALEX) with their regular conventions and publications attest to the prolific European interest in phraseology. With regard to bibliographical publications, the voluminous bibliography by Joachim Lengert (1998-1999) is an inventory of studies on phraseology (in a wide sense) in Romance philology “from the beginning until 1997". It comprises 17,433 titles. Bibliographies of recent studies on English and general phraseology are included in Welte (1990) and specially collected in Cowie/Howarth (1996) whose bibliography is reproduced and continued on the internet and provides a rich source of the most recent publications in the field.

Bibliography

• Altenberg, Bengt. On the Phraseology of Spoken English: The Evidence of Recurrent Word-Combinations // Phraselogy. Ed. A.P.Cowie. – Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1998
• Álvarez de la Granja, María (ed.). Fixed Expressions in Cross-Linguistic Perspective. A Multilingual and Multidisciplinary Approach. – Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovac. 2008
• Amosova, N.N. Osnovi angliyskoy frazeologii. – Leningrad, 1963
• Arsentieva, E.F. Frazeologiya i frazeografija v sopostavitel’nom aspekte (na materiale angliyskogo i russkogo yazikov). – Kazan’, 2006
• Cowie, A.P. Phraseology: Theory, Analysis, and Applications. – Oxford, 2001
• Cherdantseva, T.Z. Jazik I ego obrazi: Ocherki po italyanskoy frazeologii. – Moskva: URSS, 2007
• Gläser, Rosemarie. The Stylistic Potential of Phraselolgical Units in the Light of Genre Analysis // Phraselogy. Ed. A.P.Cowie. – Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1998
• Knappe, Gabriele. Idioms and Fixed Expressions in English Language Study before 1800. – Peter Lang, 2004
• Kunin, A.V. Osnovnie ponjatija angliyskoy frazeologii kak lingvisticheskoy disciplini // Anglo-russkiy frazeologicheskiy slovar. Izd 3-e, ispr. V dvuh knigah. – Moskva, 1967. – T. 2 – P. 1233 – 1264
• Kunin, A.V. Angliyskaya frazeologiya. – Moskva, 1970
• Kunin, A.V. Frazeologija sovremennogo angliyskogo yazika.– Moskva, 1972
• Kunin, A.V. Kurs fraseologii sovremennogo angliyskogo yazika. – 2-e izd. pererab. – Moskva: Visshaya shkola, 1996
• Mokienko, V.M. Slavjanskaya frazeologiya. – Moskva: Visshaya Shkola, 1989
• Molotkov, A.I. Osnovi frazeologii russkogo jazika. – Leningrad: Nauka, 1977
• Nazaryan, A.G. Frazeologiya sovremennogo frantsuzkogo jazika. – Moskva, 1987
• Raichshtein, A.D. Sopostavitelniy analiz nemetskoy I russkoy frazeologii. – Moskva: Visshaya shkola, 1980
• Shanskiy, N.M. Frazeologiya sovremennogo russkogo yazika. – Moskva: Visshaya shkola, 1985
• Soloduho, E.M. Problemi internazional'noy frazeoologii. – Kazan’, 1982
• Zhukov, V.P. Semantika frazeologicheskih oborotov. – Moskva: Prosveshenie, 1978

External links

• Extensive bibliography in phraseology
• http://www.krugosvet.ru/articles/82/1008287/1008287a1.htm