Morphemic and Syntactic Phrasemes

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.

Phrasal verb vs. Simplex pairs in legal-lay discourse: the Late Modern English period in focus

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.

The origins of the term “phraseology”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.