Phraseology in Time: On the Innovative Treatment of Word Combinations in Specialised Nineteenth-Century Bilingual Dictionaries

Abstract

Historically, the word phraseology has been connected with lexicography (Knappe 2004), especially with bilingual dictionaries (Moon 2000) and their norm-setting role associated with foreign-language teaching and learning. Nineteenth-century specialised bilingual lexicography seems to depart from the then usual norm-based approaches and to favour the inclusion of use-related phraseological combinations. This paper analyses the treatment of word combinations which can be referred to as ante-litteram collocations in two rather different dictionaries, namely Tarver’s Royal Phraseological English–French, French–English Dictionary (1845–53) and Nutt’s English–Italian Conversation Dictionary (1894), to see to what extent nineteenth-century specialised bilingual lexicography has marked a move away from prescriptivism and affected later studies on the lexicographical treatment of collocation and changes in the use of the word phraseology.