Phraseological Competence Research Articles

Phraseologieerwerb und Kinderliteratur. Verfahren der ›Verständlichmachung‹ von Phraseologismen im Kinder- und Jugendbuch am Beispiel von Otfried Preußlers Die kleine Hexe und Krabat

In this paper, it is claimed that authors adjust their use of phraseology in children’s books to the still limited phraseological competence of children. Authors may apply procedures such as phraseme accumulation, phraseme paraphrasing, or phraseme modification in order to enhance the comprehensibility of phrasemes for children. With increasing phraseological competence of adolescents, the use of phraseology in books for adolescents changes. Three hypotheses are set up: (H1) The phraseme types used in children’s books are semantically and pragmatically rather ›easy‹ compared to those in adolescent’s books; (H2) the number of phrasemes which are accompanied by procedures of enhancing comprehensibility is higher in children’s books than in adolescent’s books; (H3) the type of enhancement procedures used in children’s books is different from the type of enhancement procedures used in adolescent’s books. The hypotheses are quantitatively examined in a comparative case study on Otfried Preusler’s Die kleine Hexe and Krabat.

A cross-linguistic application on idioms rendering a conceptual schema

Figurative meanings such as idioms are widely admitted to be a stumbling block in the acquisition of a second language; it is often maintained that their ‘arbitrary’, languagespecific nature makes it difficult for learners to acquire them, and render them resistant to translation. However, the contribution of phraseological language to attaining a high level of communicative competence is widely admitted (Lattey 1986; Nattinger & DeCarrico 1992; Howarth 1998; Littlemore & Low 2006) and proficient non-native speakers of any language may be complimented on their command of appropriate idiomatic language use. Actually, lexical and phraseological competence may be asserted to make a greater contribution to achieving proficiency in a foreign language than grammar. Littlemore & Low (2006) demonstrate that metaphoric competence contributes to all aspects of communicative competence (grammatical, textual, illocutionary, sociolinguistic, and strategic competence) and are in favour of its incorporation in language syllabuses starting with low levels. The existent issue is thus not so much whether, but how to incorporate idiomatic language into language education.

Cross-linguistic influence and acceptability judgments of L2 and L1 collocations

The paper presents an investigation of the extent and nature of cross-linguistic influence on both L2 and L1 phraseological competence of advanced Polish learners of English. We review relevant research studies, which describe various types of collocational deviation from native speaker norms in the language production of advanced learners, and indicate that the collocational choices of learners may be affected by their L1, which results either in incorrect collocations, or in patterns of underuse or overuse. We administered two acceptability judgment tests to 91 Polish advanced learners of English, aged 20–22. The collocations used in the test could be classified with respect to two criteria: firstly, they were either typical or unusual collocations; secondly, they were either congruent with their L1 or L2 equivalents or not. Despite the fact that there is both empirical and theoretical support for the idea that learners may show a preference for those L2 collocations which are congruent with L1, our findings do not support this hypothesis. There is no obvious pattern of cross-linguistic influence emerging from the data. The results of this study seem to give the picture of advanced learners who function in their L2 independently of the L1.

How Long Are Sayings?

We talk, communicate, chat, speak, and make utterances - all these synonymous verbs signify verbal communication and mark the same action. The action may also be expressed by means of set expressions, or more precisely, phrases or idioms. Words, phrases and syntactic units, or the sc. microtexts, are at our disposal. The issue may be also considered at another angle - namely, how short can a phrase be for it to preserve its contents? Compared to other short forms (proverbs, riddles), phrases are generally characterised as being shorter. It has been determined that the minimum length of a phrase is a com- bination of at least two fully semantic words. According to a common claim a phrase characterises a specific situation. Therefore, a phrase can only exist as a set expression in a context. Conceptualising phraseologisms, however, prompts the question of the 'obligatory' and 'facultative' constituents of a phraseologism, i.e. the issue of its form and, more importantly, of its defining. While discussing the motivation of phrasal expressions, scholars often refer to their opacity vs. transparency. But what would the ideal form be for which people possess suffi- cient background knowledge, including phraseological competence, which is re- quired for understanding a given expression? What is the smallest number of words necessary for understanding an expression? Whether and to which extent can we find help in metalanguage framing a set phrase? In the article I will discuss the issues related to the study of phrasal semantics on the example of set phrases connected with the image of talking, narration, words, etc. The discussion will rely on material from the database of Estonian phrases.

Phraseology and Second Language Proficiency

It is now generally accepted that advanced learners of English need to have command of a wide range of complex lexical units, which are for a native speaker processed as prefabricated chunks, fixed, or semi-fixed expressions. However, although there has been an increasing amount written about the role of phraseology in second language acquisition, there remains a lack of detailed description of learners' phraseological performance as the basis for understanding how phraseological competence develops. This paper addresses certain current issues in the description of collocations in English, and, in discussing the major approaches to the linguistic description of prefabricated language, the need for detailed categorization is emphasized, particularly for those interested in the development of this component of proficiency in a second language. Data is presented from native speaker language use, illustrating what can be revealed by one such descriptive model. Finally, the findings of a number of studies of native and non-native academic writing in English are discussed

Enseñar fraseología: consideraciones sobre la fraseodidáctica del español

El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar la presencia de la fraseología en los niveles de enseñanza obligatoria y proponer una serie de actividades cuyo objetivo sea desarrollar la competencia fraseológica de hablantes nativos de español. Tras mostrar la importancia de la fraseología como parte fundamental del caudal lingüístico de un hablante nativo y defender la existencia de la competencia fraseológica también en lengua materna, se examina la presencia de la fraseología en las diferentes vertientes de la competencia en comunicación lingüística del actual currículo: pragmática, lingüística, sociolingüística y literaria. Se indica, además, el importante papel que puede jugar al abordar determinados contenidos desde una perspectiva transversal (fraseología y cultura). Para finalizar, se hacen algunas propuestas sobre cómo debe presentarse la fraseología en lengua materna y se presentan diferentes actividades según el nivel de enseñanza.