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Folk Narratives and Legends as Sources of widespread Idioms: Toward a Lexikon of Common Figurative Units

Folk Narratives and Legends as Sources of widespread Idioms: Toward a Lexikon of Common Figurative Units

Author(s): Elisabeth Piirainen / Language(s): English / Issue: 48/2011

Keywords: animal tales; comical stories; common figurative units; fables; folk narratives; intertextuality; languages of Europe; legends; Schwundstufe; widespread idioms

The subject matter of this article is widespread idioms originating from folk tales and old legends that once were elements of the folklore of various European language communities but later fell into oblivion. The motifs of these tales survived in currently known idioms of many languages of Europe and beyond and thus contribute to constituting a part of the Lexicon of Common Figurative Units.

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Idioms of comparison in English and Croatian

O poredbenom frazemu u engleskom i hrvatskom jeziku

Author(s): Marija Omazić / Language(s): Croatian / Issue: 1+2/2002

Keywords: idioms of comparison; simile; metonymy; metaphor; variation; modification

The study reported in this paper examines idioms of comparison in English and Croatian. In particular, it investigates the relationship between idioms of comparison (IOC), similes, metaphors and metonymies, and characteristics and structure of IOCs. Moreover, it discusses specific features and types of IOCs that were observed when contrasting sets of English and Croatian expressions. Special attention is paid to variations and modifications of canonical forms of IOCs. Other issues addressed include lexical relationships between IOCs, expressions for indirect negation, expressions for positive and negative evaluation, and meaning intensification, use and stylistic features of IOCs, mechanisms underlying the formation of IOCs and, finally, their lexical composition.

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Idioms in interviews and their pragmatic and semantic characteristics

Pragmatički i značenjski elementi frazema u tekstnoj vrsti intervju

Author(s): Leonard Pon,Alisa Rakovac,Ivana Jozić / Language(s): English / Issue: 1+2/2006

Keywords: idioms; interview; pragmatics; semantics

This paper deals with idioms in interviews, focusing on their pragmatic and semantic characteristics. The corpus was collected from weekly magazines published in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The analysis of the corpus was based on the definition of idioms in the narrow sense, and we took a closer look at their functions and semantic characteristics in the text, as well as at the modifications of their original forms. This paper also deals with the text type interview in more detail as an extremely interesting combination of written and spoken language.

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A Systematic Approach on the Properties of Idioms

UNA SISTEMATIZACIÓN DE LAS PROPIEDADES DE LAS UNIDADES FRASEOLÓGICAS

Author(s): Oana-Adriana Duţă / Language(s): Spanish / Issue: 1-2/2013

Keywords: idioms; idiomaticity; stability

Idioms differ from other lexical structures (single words, free combinations, sentences) by various features that can also be used as criteria for determining whether a certain unit belongs to this category or not. Some linguists speak of “phraseologicity”, defined in different ways and from distinct perspectives: either as idiomaticity, i.e. the absence of semantic compositionality, or as low translatability or stability. The hereby article presents both the main properties of idioms (fixation and idiomaticity) and other secondary properties, as found in scientific literature, also proposing a system of interdependences.

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Biblical idioms in reportages of Ryszard Kapuściński

Frazeologizmy biblijne w reportażach Ryszarda Kapuścińskiego

Author(s): Agnieszka Sygidus / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 58/2012

Keywords: the Bible; biblical idiom; piece of literary reportage

The aim of this article is presentation of idiomatic expressions of biblical provenance which occur in Ryszard Kapuścińskis reportages. The Bible is one of the main sources of European idioms (the other are mythology, ancient and modern literature, ancient history). There were analysed about 25 most often occurring in those reportages idioms. There could be set apart: expressions, which means verbal combinations with constitutive verb element and nominal combinations with constitutive noun element. Occurring of biblical idioms in Kapuścińskis reportages is a stylistic device which imparts a sense of gravity to them.

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Spelling variants of idioms in contemporary monolingual dictionaries

Wariantywność pisowniowa frazeologizmów we współczesnych słownikach jednojęzycznych

Author(s): Elżbieta Awramiuk / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 16/2016

Keywords: spelling; punctuation; variants; lexicography; phraseology

The article discusses spelling and punctuation variants of Polish phrases in contemporary Polish dictionaries. Spelling variants of idioms with regard to capital/lowercase spelling, most of all, results from progressing desemantization of original meanings. Examples excerpted from lexicographical sources prove that units whose meaning is not identical are usually written down in two variants, e.g. pyrrhic/Pyrrhic victory. Variants aremuch more frequently connected with a diversifiedmanner of recording a given unit in different lexicographical sources. Every dictionary provides one way of spelling of a given compound but consulting various dictionaries proves the existence of more than one variant.

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ARM AND LEG IDIOMS IN THE BNC AND COCA CORPORA: VIEWS ON THE CULTURAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN BRITISH AND AMERICAN SOCIETY

ARM AND LEG IDIOMS IN THE BNC AND COCA CORPORA: VIEWS ON THE CULTURAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN BRITISH AND AMERICAN SOCIETY

Author(s): Nevena Tanasić / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2014

Keywords: Arm and leg idioms; BNC; COCA; Cultural difference;

Phraseological units, primarily idioms are those types of linguistic units which reveal to a great extent how certain linguistic community copes with its surroundings. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate how idioms in English language are actually differently used across different genres in British and American linguistic communities, and try to explain those results in light of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. The study was conducted on the basis of the idioms that have the same body part, namely arm and/or leg, and those idioms were then compared in two corpora – the BNC (British National Corpus) and COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English).

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A Cross-Cultural Study On White Colour Idioms In Turkish And English: Conceptual Metaphor Theory In Focus

A Cross-Cultural Study On White Colour Idioms In Turkish And English: Conceptual Metaphor Theory In Focus

Author(s): Gökçen Hastürkoğlu / Language(s): Turkish,English / Issue: 1/2017

Keywords: white colour; idiomatic expressions; conceptual metaphor; conceptual metonymy; cultural cognition

This study aims at investigating how similar and different the embodied cognition of Turkish and English speakers is by providing a systematic description of Turkish and English white colour idiomatic expressions and by analyzing them within the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory through which the cognitive motivations behind the idiomatic expressions can be demonstrated. In order to do so, a large-scale corpus study based on specialized dictionaries on idioms in Turkish and English was carried out and a table was presented for each language illustrating the idiomatic expression, its meaning, its translation for the Turkish part, and the underlying conceptual metaphor or metonymy. After this cognitive analysis, it was revealed that despite some similarities in the cognitive mappings of the idioms in Turkish and English, the connotations of white colour idioms in two genetically unrelated languages vary because of cultural, historical, religious, or customary matters.

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A Cognitive And Cross-Cultural Study On Body Part Terms In English And Turkish Colour Idioms

A Cognitive And Cross-Cultural Study On Body Part Terms In English And Turkish Colour Idioms

Author(s): Gökçen Hastürkoğlu / Language(s): Turkish,English / Issue: 2/2018

Keywords: body parts;colour idioms; conceptual metonymy; cultural cognition;

This study aims to reveal and compare the embodied cognition of English and Turkish speakers through their use of body part terms in basic colour term idioms. More specifically, it addresses the distribution of the body part terms in Turkish and English basic colour term idioms and conceptual metonymies underlying these idioms, and it interprets the findings in terms of socio-cultural and socio-cognitive structures in the minds and linguistic practices of people of Turkish and English cultures. In order to achieve this aim, the idioms with Berlin and Kay’s basic colour terms and body part terms are selected from the specialized dictionaries on idioms. After the collection of data, the cognitive analysis is conducted within the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory. The result demonstrates that although there are some conceptual metaphors and metonymies which tend to be universal as they are grounded in bodily experience, English and Turkish speakers’ conceptualizations through the basic colour terms and body parts vary tremendously because of different socio-cultural and socio-cognitive backgrounds of these speech communities.

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Idioms of Lovranšćina in a previous dialectological literature

Govori Lovranšćine u dosadašnjoj dijalektološkoj literaturi

Author(s): Silvana Vranić,Ivana Nežić / Language(s): Croatian / Issue: 1/2010

Keywords: Čakavian dialect; Ekavian dialect; Northeast Istrian subdialect; idioms of Lovranšćina;

Work presents a brief overview of previous dialectological research of the idioms of Lovranšćina and their mentioning in dialectological relevant literature, from the first mention of idioms of Lovran in 1912 in the paper Izveštaj Državnom Savetu o pribiranju dijalektološke građe, potpomognutom sredstvima iz „Velimirijanuma“ written by Aleksandar Belić to the latest insights in the monography Čakavski ekavski dijalekt: sustav i podsustavi written by Silvana Vranić in 2005 and doctoral dissertation Akcenatski tipovi imenica i glagola u sjeverozapadnim čakavskim govorima (dijakronijski i sinkronijski aspekt) written by Sanja Zubčić in 2006.

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Promoting deep-level processing through etymological elaboration: The case of idioms in Croatian EFL context

Promoting deep-level processing through etymological elaboration: The case of idioms in Croatian EFL context

Author(s): Jasmina Jelčić Čolakovac / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2019

Keywords: idiom teaching; deep-level processing; etymological elaboration; EFL vocabulary teaching; metaphoric awareness;

Idiomatic expressions have long been named as one of the most notorious language items to be taught to EFL learners, mainly due to their opaque nature that prevents the reader from inferring the meaning. The purpose of this paper is to cast light on the nature of idiom comprehension among Croatian learners of English who are at upper-intermediate and advanced levels. Two groups were included in the research whereas the instrument comprised both pre-taught and novel vocabulary. The experimental group was treated by means of etymological background for each expression which was provided for them during their English course. The control group was instructed to remember as many expressions as they could by means of rote memorization strategies. Both groups were retested after a certain period in order to determine the retention of pre-taught and novel items and see whether the elaboration of etymological background exerted any effect on the retention. The results showed the experimental group outperformed the control participants in recalling pre-taught idioms as well as novel expressions, which goes in favor of etymological elaboration presenting a transferrable learning strategy as opposed to rote memorization.

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Killing more than two birds with one stone: Teaching topical vocabulary through idioms

Killing more than two birds with one stone: Teaching topical vocabulary through idioms

Author(s): Albina R. Abdrafikova,Anastasia S. Syunina,Tatiana S. Pimenova,Iskander E. Yarmakeev / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2018

Keywords: EFL class; experiment; syllabus topics; teaching vocabulary through idioms; topical vocabulary;

The aim of this study is to monitor, analyse and assess the effectiveness of using idioms in mastering students' vocabulary knowledge and improving speech in EFL class. The leading research method was a three-stage experiment. To successfully conduct the experiment, there were compiled a list of an active vocabulary and a list of English idioms that contain this vocabulary. All these were to meet the syllabus topics. A total of 62 school students were observed in this experiment. The obtained results were positive, indicating the fact that teaching vocabulary in idiomatic expressions turned out to be more appealing to learners and more effective than 'teaching laundry lists of vocabulary alone'. The paper discusses issues and practices of teaching topical vocabulary in EFL class and offers general recommendations for foreign language instructors.

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Intercrossing Somatic Verbal Idioms in Spanish as a Foreign Language Classroom

Paralelismos somáticos y aplicación a E/LE

Author(s): Marius Rădoi / Language(s): Spanish / Issue: 1 (33)/2021

Keywords: phraseological units; contrastive phraseology; somatic idioms; translation equivalents; Spanish as a Foreign Language;

The aim of this paper is to analyze the verbal phrases generated by the lexeme ”eye” in Spanish and Romanian. The contrastive study of phraseological units (at morphosyntactic, semantic and pragmatic level) that we carry out will provide us with the necessary tools in order to select the relevant and useful set expressions for developing a database whose recipients are Romanian learners of Spanish as a Foreign Language (levels A1-B2). We focus on the degree of equivalences, the argument structure, the communicative functions and on other points of intersection. Unlike the guidelines set by the curricular documents (The Common European Framework of References for Languages and Cervantes Institute Curricular Plan), we strongly believe that the introduction of the idiomatic component from the initial levels is possible and necessary, since phraseological competence represents a relevant component within the global communicative competence. Our objective is to demonstrate that this theory is even more relevant in the case of related languages, which also share a cultural idiosyncrasy.

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English and Romanian Body Parts Idioms Reflecting the Concept of Common Sense. A Cognitive Perspective

English and Romanian Body Parts Idioms Reflecting the Concept of Common Sense. A Cognitive Perspective

Author(s): Ana-Maria Trantescu / Language(s): English / Issue: XXI/2020

Keywords: body parts idioms; cognitive theory; common sense; conceptual motivation;

Phraseology represents a complex and controversial domain of semantics. The paper analyses from a cognitive point of view a series of English and Romanian body parts idioms reflecting the idea of common sense, of sound practical judgement. While traditional linguists study mainly the formal and functional aspects of idioms, cognitive linguists have a completely different approach. They consider that there is a systematic conceptual motivation for many idioms. Most idioms are products of our conceptual system and not simply a matter of language. Our work is based on the cognitive theory according to which idioms are motivated by conceptual structures: conventional knowledge, conceptual metonymies, and metaphors. The notion of embodiment can be easily applied especially to human body idioms. We also try to prove that there is a considerable degree of correspondence regarding these idioms in both languages, i.e., they share the same figurative meaning, as well as the same underlying conceptual strategies.

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Anthropocentrically Marked Idioms with Species Names of Birds

Antropocentryczne nacechowanie frazeologizmów z nazwami ptaków

Author(s): Beata Burska-Ratajczyk / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 7/2021

Keywords: anthropocentrism; phraseology; word connections comprising species names of birds; metaphorization; evaluation

This article describes anthropocentrically marked idioms with species names of birds in their structure. The material presented here shows the importance of the relationships between birds and humans as fixed in Polish phraseology. Structurally varied combinations of words containing a bird component serve as metaphorical characterizations of humans. Experiences and observations contained in them connote both positive and negative values. Those values concern not only the appearance of people, but also the intellect, human experience, and the general principles of human life.

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Gamified Assessment of Business English: Learning and Testing Business Idioms and Collocations via Digital Escape Rooms

Gamified Assessment of Business English: Learning and Testing Business Idioms and Collocations via Digital Escape Rooms

Author(s): Ioana Mudure-Iacob / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2021

Keywords: Gamified assessment; digital escape rooms; Business idioms; collaborative learning; autonomy;

Business English teaching and learning requires customised assessment mechanisms, perhaps even more so in the current digital format, as digitally native learners call for a complex array of expectations in terms of language usability. Gamified learning experiences can serve as multifunctional instruments of blending formative assessment and entertainment along learning sequences, engaging learners in an enriching challenge that both motivates them in the pursuit of language skills and grants them autonomy in collaborative tasks. Learners’ use of idioms and collocations in the Business English framework can be tailored through digital breakout room tasks, which allow for a mechanism of formative assessment and interactive learning in a creative instructional format. The gamified filter serves the purpose of enabling students to self-test their Business English skills in problem-solving digital scenarios, while at the same time, extending the teachers’ assessment role towards a more entertaining format. The opportunities and challenges of having to break out of digital escape rooms, particularly using idioms and specific phrases in vocabulary and speaking-based tasks, can pave the way to more engaging learning methods.

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THE ENTRY AND SUPER-ENTRY IN A DICTIONARY OF IDIOMS

NATUKNICA I NADNATUKNICA U FRAZEOLOŠKOM RJEČNIKU

Author(s): Branka Tafra / Language(s): Croatian / Issue: 2/2021

Keywords: entry; super-entry; idiom; multiword expression; semi-compound word; phraseological dictionary; variation; synonymy; conversion; lexicalization

This discussion of the entry and super-entry is the one that concerns both the internal and external boundaries of the idiom and the identity of the idiom and its components. It gives rise to three groups of issues. The fi rst group includes the theoretical solutions that have already been implemented in Croatian idiomatic lexicography, which constitute a signifi cant shift in comparison to the previous state of linguistic knowledge. The greatest shift undoubtedly lies in the demarcation between polysemy and conversion and in the introduction of a multiword expression as a super-entry. The second group involves proposing the strategies that can be applied in idiomatic dictionaries, such as drawing a clearer distinction between idiom variation and synonymy and identifying the occurrences of onymization and deonymization of components. The third group of issues uncover the dilemmas that seek solutions. First and foremost, what needs to be resolved is the question of the nature of semi--compound words. If they are to be treated as lexemes, which some of them are, then they cannot be categorized as idioms, and if they are to be treated as phrases that can turn into idioms, then they cannot be categorized as semi-compound words, since the latter represents a term from the area of word-formation.

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Feminine Forms Derived from Masculine Nouns in Slovenian Idioms

Feminativi v frazemih slovenskega jezika

Author(s): Tjaša Markežič / Language(s): Slovenian / Issue: 21/2021

Keywords: Slovenian language; word formation; idioms; feminatives; corpus;

This article deals with feminine forms derived from masculine nouns in Slovenian idioms, collected in different dictionaries of Slovenian idioms. Examining the Gigafida 2.0 corpus indicates that the use of such idioms or parts thereof in everyday language is fairly widespread, and the examples are chosen to indicate the possible variety of these elements. We also noticed that a woman as a social being is still neglected. Some examples from Gigafida 2.0 corpus express an explicit negative connotation.

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Conventional Knowledge, Pictorial Elucidation, Etymological Motivation, and Structural Elaboration in a Thematic Dictionary of Idioms

Conventional Knowledge, Pictorial Elucidation, Etymological Motivation, and Structural Elaboration in a Thematic Dictionary of Idioms

Author(s): Jarosław Wiliński / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2022

Keywords: metaphor; metonymy; idioms; etymology; conventional knowledge; structural elaboration; onomasiological dictionary;

The primary focus of this article is on the usefulness of conventional knowledge, pictorial illustrations, and etymological notes in the process of defining the meaning of idioms within the macrostructure of a thematic dictionary of idioms based on cognitive principles of linguistic organization, and on the use of phonological motivation and iconic and scalar ordering as principles for explaining the form of idiomatic expressions. This article makes a noteworthy contribution to the widely-held view in current language teaching and pedagogy that grouping figurative idioms under source domains and conceptual metaphors, using visuals for explaining the literal reading of idioms, providing background information about their literal meanings or origins, as well as drawing students’ attention to the lexical make-up of idioms can be conducive to their learning and understanding and especially beneficial for students’ retention of the meaning and form of such phrases (Kӧvecses and Szabó 1996; Kӧvecses 2001; 2002; Benor and Levy 2006; Boers and Lindstromberg 2008a; Kӧvecses and Csábi 2014).

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ANGEL AND DEVIL IN EXPRESSIONS (IDIOMS, PHRASES, PROVERBS)

L’ANGE ET LE DIABLE DANS LES EXPRESSIONS

Author(s): Adela-Marinela Stancu / Language(s): French / Issue: 20/2020

Keywords: Angel; Devil; Expression; Phrase; Proverb;

Our study aims to depict the meanings of the words angel and devil as they appear in the specialized explanatory dictionaries. We have shown the extent to which these words have become known in the common language (idioms, phrases, proverbs).

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