Interlinguale Phraseologie: Theorie, Praxis und Perspektiven

Abstract

In the following paper, several aspects of interlingual phraseology are considered. The term interlingual should be understood as an umbrella term (unlike, e.g. cross-linguistic or German kontrastiv), covering both theoretical and applied contextswithin phraseology related tomore than one language, butwithout necessarily being typologically focused. We also believe that there is a need for a unified linguistic theory of lexical units covering both phraseology (in the following we use the term phraseme for all phraseological units) and single words (Colson 2008, 2010; Dobrovol’skij and Piirainen 2005, 2009; Gries 2008).This paper is a contribution to such a theory of lexis. Our definition of phrasemes, which serves to distinguish phrasemes from other lexical units in written language only, is based on the complexity and structure of the form of linguistic signs: – Single words and – in languages like German, Icelandic and Danish – word formations: linguistic signs with a visually continuous form (cf. word definitions and the concept of a graphemic word in Fuhrhop 2008). – Phrasemes: linguistic signs with a visually non-continuous form. Due to their non-continuous form, the sign character of phrasemes is not obvious in writing. Especially if a phraseme is not known by a speaker, this can create problems in applied contexts such as foreign language acquisition and translation. The differentiation between graphemic words and phrasemes will result in either a need for a language specific categorization of phraseology (cf. Fleischer 1997: 249–250) or the inclusion of compound words in languages like French and English in the category phraseme. There are indeed, as Barz (2007: 27) points out, several functional, structural and semantic similarities between phrasemes and AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR 126 Erla Hallsteinsdottir and Ken Faro word formations (cf. also the discussion of Schwarzer Markt and Schwarzmarkt in Donalies 2009: 7–8). Inspired by the diversity of recent phraseological research and the difficulties of describing our data with existing theoretical approaches based on the traditional linguistic dichotomy of langue-parole or performance-competence, we extend our linguistic approach to include a cognitive dimension (cf. Hallsteinsdottir 2007: 161–162; Hallsteinsdottir and Faro 2006). Thus we propose three approaches to phraseological research: 1. The study of phrasemes as a part of an abstract language system.We assume that the language system is the linguistic resource for language use. 2. The study of phrasemes in texts, where language is manifested as a result of language production that is based on a selection from the resources of the language system and, in part, determined by the linguistic knowledge of each speaker. 3. The study of phrasemes as a cognitive phenomenon that is a part of an individual speaker’s linguistic knowledge and underlies idiosyncratic aspects of language processing based on the abstract language system. This differentiation between forms of language manifestation is to some extent the base upon which the rest of the work is founded. Functionalism is a central aspect of the way we look at phraseology in an interlingual perspective. This should be understood in two ways. First, we are interested in the functions of the phrasemes in the three manifestation forms of language and language use mentioned above. This includes discourse functions in general and the role – and communicative relevance – of iconography (images, pictures) in particular. Second, the idea of functionalism in this context involves a context specificity of many features which may seem relevant when analyzing phrasemes from a certain perspective within one linguistic discipline but which can be of no relevance in others. We argue that all phrasemes have a complex semantic nature, which allows them to be used and understood both as compositional word sequences and as lexicalized units. This semiotic complexity provides an inherent potential for manipulations and it is a favored source for puns. Phrasemes are a part of the language system as lexicalized units. As well their constituents in most cases are also autonomous systemic units of the given language. The default textual realization of a phraseme is as a lexicalized unit since a compositional realization would automatically trigger the phraseological meaning, at least for known phrasemes. The cognitive linguistic processing of phrasemes can be either way: either based on the phraseological meaning for known phrasemes or on a comAUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR Interlinguale Phraseologie 127 positional processing of the meaning of the components – or even a combination of several strategies and meaning sources (cf. Hallsteinsdottir 2001). We assume that all phrasemes (like all lexical units in general) are conventional linguistic signs, and thus arbitrary, that is in the non-trivial, Saussurian reading of the word. The arbitrariness is a characteristic of the form-meaning relation in the linguistic system. Motivation, on the other hand, can be seen as a purely cognitive phenomenon based on the individual linguistic competence. Thus speakers are able to motivate phrasemes by (a) creating a relation between the form and the meaning of known phraseological units (retrospective motivation) and (b) interpreting the relation between the form and the meaning of assumed, but basically unknown phraseological units (prospective motivation) (cf. Faro 2006). The often purported (and even Saussure himself is not sufficiently consequent here) idea that arbitrariness and motivation are antonyms does not hold. Instead, we are dealing with two different perspectives on the same phenomenon. Phraseological equivalence is a central issue in interlingual phraseology.As shown in figure 1, we propose that equivalence should be examined by including meaning in L1 and L2 monolexical word phraseme word formation free composition form in L1 phraseme word formation monolexical word free composition (iii) different structure: no formal agreement (i) full formal agreement/ (ii) partial formal agreement form in L2 (iv) phraseological non-equivalence Figure 1. A holistic approach to equivalence of lexical items based on the types of phraseological equivalence in Korhonen and Wotjak (2001: 227) AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR 128 Erla Hallsteinsdottir and Ken Faro all lexical items instead of focusing only on equivalence within the phraseology of two or more languages. We propose that a full understanding of equivalence within phraseology should not only include all lexical items but should also differentiate in the number and granularity of equivalence aspects (cf. Faro 2006) according to the respective research context. Each research context, and by that we mean linguistic discipline, demands its own specific theory andmethodological approach of phraseological equivalence. Thus phraseology should be treated differently within various “applied” and one non-applied linguistic discipline and so four different approaches to phraseological equivalence in lexicology, lexicography, translation and language acquisition respectively are illustrated.