Formulaic Expressions for Foreign Language Learning and Teaching

Foreign language teaching experts unanimously insist on the necessity of acquiring formulaic expressions in order to communicate successfully in the target language. However, many of the treatises in favour of phraseme use, including semantically non-compositional idiomatic expressions, by foreign language learners seem to be marked by an insufficient depth of reflection as to applied linguistic, methodological, and phraseodidactic[1] criteria. The present contribution therefore aims at a differentiated treatment of prefabricated communicative constructions, starting out from an extended definition and classification and by discussing the pros and cons of phraseme acquisition. These considerations will lead to the delimitation of formulaic language fundamental for an operative foreign language competence (routine formulae, collocations and “constructions”) as opposed to those types of phrasemes which are not essential or even inappropriate for non-native speakers.   [1] A term as a direct translation from German Phraseodidaktik, employed in English language publications of non-native researchers, e. g. Gonzalez-Rey (2018), which we decided to adopt here for practical reasons

Formulaic Expressions for Foreign Language Learning and Teaching

Foreign language teaching experts unanimously insist on the necessity of acquiring formulaic expressions in order to communicate successfully in the target language. However, many of the treatises in favour of phraseme use, including semantically non-compositional idiomatic expressions, by foreign language learners seem to be marked by an insufficient depth of reflection as to applied linguistic, methodological, and phraseodidactic[1] criteria. The present contribution therefore aims at a differentiated treatment of prefabricated communicative constructions, starting out from an extended definition and classification and by discussing the pros and cons of phraseme acquisition. These considerations will lead to the delimitation of formulaic language fundamental for an operative foreign language competence (routine formulae, collocations and “constructions”) as opposed to those types of phrasemes which are not essential or even inappropriate for non-native speakers.   [1] A term as a direct translation from German Phraseodidaktik, employed in English language publications of non-native researchers, e. g. Gonzalez-Rey (2018), which we decided to adopt here for practical reasons

About the aspects and roles of phrasemes in Kosztolányi’s Skylark (1924)

In this essay I examine the ways in which language functions both as a means of preserving the past and as a marker of change by examining the significance of phrasemes in the novel Pacsirta (Skylark) by Hungarian author Dezső Kosztolányi. In part by examining the ways in which the English and German translators of the novel dealt with the complexities posed by the historically and culturally embedded nature of language, I explore the complex and at times contradictory functions of language in the novel. Kosztolányi’s use of phrasemes in Pacsirta, I argue, exemplifies several of his theoretical ideas about language itself and the roles of language in the mediation of the past

Research on Phraseology Across Continents

The second volume of the IDP series contains papers by phraseologists from five continents: Europe, Australia, North America, South America and Asia, which were written within the framework of the project Intercontinental Dialogue on Phraseology, prepared and coordinated by Joanna Szerszunowicz, conducted by the University of Bialystok in cooperation with Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan. The book consists of the following parts: Dialogue on Phraseology, General and Corpus Linguistics & Phraseology, Lexicography & Phraseology, Contrastive Linguistics, Translation & Phraseology, Literature, Cultural Studies, Education & Phraseology. Dialogue contains two papers written by widely recognised phraseologists: professor Anita Naciscione from Latvia and professor Irine Goshkheteliani.The volume has been financed by the Philological Department of the University of Bialysto

Expanding the Lexicon

The book series is dedicated to the study of the multifaceted dynamics of wordplay as an interface phenomenon. The contributions aim to bring together approaches from various disciplines and present case studies on different communicative settings, including everyday language and literary communication, and thus offer fresh perspectives on wordplay in the context of linguistic innovation, language contact, and speaker-hearer-interaction

ARABIC LEGAL PHRASEOLOGY IN POSITIVE LAW AND JURISPRUDENCE: THE HISTORICAL INFLUENCE OF TRANSLATION

The present study examines Arabic legal phraseology formation from the standpoint of positive law and jurisprudence. It claims that phraseological constructions in Arabic legislative and statutory texts are largely influenced by the translation process of Roman law texts. However, scholarly literature still relies to some extent on formulae used in the Islamic jurisprudence. To illustrate this, three examples of legal principles anchored in Islamic jurisprundence, known as legal maxims, are discussed along with their corresponding expressions in positive law in modern-day Arabic. Ultimately, the purpose of this paper is twofold: firstly, to demonstrate that the phraseology present in many Arabic positive laws stems from a historical translation process that started in the beginning of the 20th century; secondly to emphasize the significance of textual genre awareness in legal translation. Concretely, the introductory section provides an overview of recent studies that have addressed legal phraseologisms. It is followed by a section on the historical role of translation in the construction of certain phraseologisms. The general legal principles of (a) burden of proof, (b) presumption of innocence, and (c) the pacta sunt servanda principle are then examined in order to shed light on the influence of both the Civilist tradition and Islamic jurisprudence on the use of legal Arabic today, as well as to demonstrate how the translation of phraseologisms is dependent on the parameters of genre. The analysis leads to the conclusion that proper use of phraseologisms, whether in drafting or translation, is closely linked to knowledge of phraseology formation and the historical influence of translation

The nature of fixed language in the subtitling of a documentary film

This research is based on the assumption that audiovisual translation (AVT ) performs a social and cultural function over its viewers, thus still justifying studies that focus on linguistic issues. This is particularly striking for the reading literacy in countries such as Portugal, that are traditionally subtitling countries, even if dubbing and voice-over are also occasionally used, particularly in the case of documentaries. The purpose for this research is to analyze the examples of restricted lexical occurrence, i.e. set phrases or semantic phrasemes (Mel’čuk 1995), depending on the terminology chosen, within the two versions of the AVT – subtitling and voice-over – of a documentary film called “The Real Da Vinci Code”. In order to achieve this purpose, we chose to follow a case study methodology that allowed us to center our attention on and single out a specific feature of language – set phrases – used in this type of audiovisual texts – documentary films

A Contrastive Lexical description of Basic Verbs. Examples from Swedish and Czech.

This paper aims at a lexical description of frequent, but not enough cognitively salient uses of frequent lexical verbs in Swedish on the background of Czech, with some implications for the lexical description of basic verbs in general. It results in a draft of a production lexicon of Swedish basic verbs for advanced Czech learners of Swedish, with focus on their uses as light verbs

Normalisation and the Translation of Phraseology in the COVALT Corpus

In this article, it is assumed that phraseological usage can be regarded as an indicator of normalisation in translated texts, as phraseological units are target-language standardised forms belonging to its lexical repertoire. Drawing on data yielded by the English-Catalan subcorpus of COVALT (Valencian Corpus of Translated Literature), it was found that Catalan translated texts are less phraseological than their corresponding English source texts, though only by a narrow margin. The narrowness of the margin seems to bear witness to some effort on the translators’ part to retain or recreate a noticeable degree of phraseological activity in translated texts. However, further research is needed into the motives underlying translator behaviour in this respect.Le présent article traite de l’hypothèse selon laquelle l’emploi d’unités phraséologiques dans les textes traduits peut être considéré comme un indicateur d’une tendance vers la normalisation. En effet, les unités phraséologiques sont des formes conventionnelles de la langue cible appartenant au répertoire lexical de cette dernière. Des données puisées dans le sous-corpus anglais-catalan de COVALT (corpus valencien de textes littéraires traduits) indiquent que les textes traduits en catalan sont moins phraséologiques que les textes sources anglais. Toutefois, cette différence est faible, ce qui semble témoigner d’un effort, de la part des traducteurs, pour préserver ou recréer une phraséologie significative dans les textes cibles. Cependant, il faudra mener d’autres études pour identifier les motivations sous-jacentes à cette pratique

"A little more than kin" - Quotations as a linguistic phenomenon : a study based on quotations from Shakespeare's Hamlet

Quotations "oscillate between the occasional and the conventional" as Burger/Buhofer/Sialm (1982) once succinctly formulated. Developed from a PhD thesis, this book explores precisely this "oscillating" character of quotations: It discusses the nature of quotations and the relationship between common quotations and phraseology from a theoretical and an empirical perspective. Shakespeare's Hamlet was chosen as a canonical text whose frequently quoted traces can be followed across centuries. Scholarly work from various disciplines leads to an understanding of quotations as moving in a space created by the two dimensions of reference and repetition: Quotations are definable by a horizontal communicative axis (reference) and a vertical, intertextual axis of manifest lineages of use (repetition). Empirically, the data led to a categorisation of quotations as verbal, thematic and onomastic, based on the question "what has been repeated: words, themes or names?" Case studies further corroborate the proposition that verbal quotations may become (almost) ordinary multi-word units if the following conditions are met: a) they lose their referential dimension, b) they develop formal and/or semantic usage patterns and/or c) they are no longer limited to their original, literary discourse