This volume is addressed to researchers in the field of phraseology, and to teachers, translators and lexicographers. It is a collection of essays offering a comprehensive, modern analysis of phrasemes, embracing a wide range of subjects and themes, from linguistic, both applied and theoretical, to cultural aspects. The contrastive approach underlying this variety of themes allows the divergences and analogies between phraseological units in two or more languages to be outlined. The languages compared here are both major and minor, European and non-European, and the text includes contrastive analyses of the most commonly investigated languages (French-German, English-Spanish, Russian-German), as well as some less frequently investigated languages (like Ukrainian, Romanian, Georgian and Thai), which are not as well-represented in phraseological description, despite their scientific interest.

Long regarded as a peripheral issue, phraseology is now taking centre stage in a wide range of fields. This recent explosion of interest undoubtedly has a great deal to do with the development of corpus linguistics research, which has both demonstrated the key role of phraseological expressions in language and provided researchers with automated methods of extraction and analysis. The aim of this volume is to take stock of current research in phraseology from a variety of perspectives: theoretical, descriptive, contrastive, cultural, lexicographic and computational. It contains overview chapters by leading experts in the field and a series of case studies focusing on a wide range of multiword units: collocations, similes, idioms, routine formulae and recurrent phrases. The volume is an invitation for experienced phraseologists to look at the field with different eyes and a useful introduction for the many researchers who are intrigued by phraseology but need help in finding their way in this rich but complex domain.

This volume is addressed to researchers in the field of phraseology, and to teachers, translators and lexicographers. It is a collection of essays offering a comprehensive, modern analysis of phrasemes, embracing a wide range of subjects and themes, from linguistic, both applied and theoretical, to cultural aspects. The contrastive approach underlying this variety of themes allows the divergences and analogies between phraseological units in two or more languages to be outlined. The languages compared here are both major and minor, European and non-European, and the text includes contrastive analyses of the most commonly investigated languages (French-German, English-Spanish, Russian-German), as well as some less frequently investigated languages (like Ukrainian, Romanian, Georgian and Thai), which are not as well-represented in phraseological description, despite their scientific interest.

Combining the fields of phraseology and contrastive analysis, this book describes how patterns, defined as recurrent word-combinations with semantic unity, behave cross-linguistically. As the contrastive approach adopted in the book relies on translations and a bidirectional corpus model, the first part offers an in-depth discussion of contrastive linguistics, with special emphasis on using translations as tertium comparationis and a parallel corpus as the main source of material. Central to the contrastive analysis is the use of corpus-linguistic methods in the identification of patterns, while a deeper understanding of the phraseological nature of the patterns is closely related to the concept of extended units of meaning. The second part of the book presents five case studies, using an easy-to-follow step-by-step method to illustrate the phraseological-contrastive approach at work. The studies show that patterns weave an intricate web of meanings across languages and demonstrate the potential of exploring patterns in contrast.

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,7, University of Erfurt (Philosophische Fakultät - Fachbereich Anglistik), course: Intercultural Communications, language: English, abstract: “Idioms, the colourful side of languages, are one of the symbols used while we are communicating our thoughts and feelings. They are used to give life and richness to the language by taking the existing words, combining them in a new sense, and creating new meanings, just like a work of art.” (LEN-NON, 1998, cited in BULUT; ÇELIK-YAZICI, 2004: 105) This combination of existing words “like a work of art” represents a huge challenge for non-native speakers they have to cope with in their language learning process. In the context of intercultural communication, non-native and native speakers interact with each other and often make use of idioms and other fixed expressions as “the colourful side of languages”, because they are used to it from their usual communication in their first languages. However, these fixed expressions constitute a special part of the language use due to particular characteristics, which will be explored further in this term paper. Consequently, communication between non-native and native speakers does not always runs smoothly when phraseological language comes into play. Amongst others, the cultural boundedness as well as native-like creative exploitations of the fixed expressions represent probable causes for misunderstandings. These aspects will be presented hereafter. Given the limited space of this term paper, the focus is on communication between non-native and native speakers. Phenomenon connected to the phraseological language in a lingua franca setting cannot be examined further. Within the scope of intercultural communication, contrastive linguistics is one approach towards interactions across language borders. “Contrastive linguistics focuses on pairs of languages and explores similarities and differences between them.” (KRZESZOWSKI, 1991: 10) In the tradition of contrastive linguistics, the second part of this term paper focuses on the contrastive description of the phraseological language of two different languages, namely German and English. The collection of phraseological units (PUs) is narrowed down to facilitate the comparison. PUs, whose source domain originates either from the concept ‘FIRE’ or from the concept ‘WATER’, are chosen for this comparison. However, in order to set the frame for the examination of different PUs, it is important to look at some theoretical foundations on the topic of phraseological language first.

This handbook introduces key elements of the philological research area called paremiology (the study of proverbs). It presents the main subject area as well as the current status of paremiological research. The basic notions, among others, include defining proverbs, main proverb features, origin, collecting and categorization of proverbs. Each chapter is written by a leading scholar-specialist in their area of proverbial research. Since the book represents a measured balance between the popular and scientific approach, it is recommended to a wide readership including experienced and budding scholars, students of linguistics, as well as other professionals interested in the study of proverbs.