Linguocultural Peculiarities of German and Georgian Phraseological Units – Contrastive Analysis

Knowledge about the world begins with gaining knowledge about the language. Language is a part of our national culture and plays one of the main roles in its formation. Unity of language, culture and thinking determines and forms not only national mentality, but national character as well. Specific features of the national identity are reflected in phraseological units. Phraseological unit in German, as well as in Georgian language, is a complex verbal formation. Linguistic and extralinguistic factors play an importanat role in the formation and development of phraseological units. But there are still questions – how are these phraseological units created and which language is the source language and which one is the target one. Our goal is to study the origin and structure of some German phraseological units (especially idiomatic phraseology)and to find their equivalents in Georgian. We also aim at enriching idiomatic phraseologisms with the examples of their actual use in current parlance, finding their Georgian equivalents. The present work tries to contribute to broadening the scope of investigation and methodology of the previous contrastive German-Georgian phraseology research and fill research gaps in this field

Chengyu in Chinese Language Teaching: A preliminary analysis of Italian learners’ data

Chengyu, also known as Chinese four-character idioms, are a type of traditional Chinese idiom, mostly consisting of four characters. They commonly derive from classic Chinese literary sources, including those of the three great philosophical and religious traditions that influenced the entire East Asia cultural sphere: Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism. Chengyu, therefore, possess a wide range of cultural references, and, from Chinese, spread to the languages of the other countries of the sinosphere, such as Japan and Korea. Although many scholars have emphasized the importance of the acquisition of chengyu, not much attention has been paid to chengyu learning in Chinese Language Teaching research so far. As a preliminary attempt to address this gap, this paper reports the results of two small-scale, exploratory experiments, aimed at investigating Italian learners’ general knowledge of chengyu and their main interpretation strategies, as well as comparing the effectiveness of direct and indirect instruction in chengyu teaching. The experiments involved participants from Bachelor and Master programs of Roma Tre University. The results show a predominant effect of negative transfer from Italian, as well as a better performance of the participants who received indirect instruction

Interpreting idioms in a second language:The role of context and transfer in interpreting English idioms by native Dutch speakers

How do people understand figurative speech in a foreign language? What strategies do they use? By means of an online questionnaire, this study investigated to what extent contextual information and transfer play a role in the interpretation of idioms in a second language, controlling for familiarity. Sixty-one native speakers of Dutch were asked to guess the correct interpretation of English idioms with and without a Dutch equivalent, presented with and without context, out of four answer options. The results showed that correctly interpreting an idiom depends on both the presence of context and the possibility of transfer. More correct interpretations were given when an idiom was presented in a context, but only for English idioms without an equivalent in the native language. English idioms with an equivalent in Dutch, often rated as familiar, were mostly understood correctly. We interpret this result as the involvement of transfer from the native language

Processing of American Idioms by Native Speakers of Brazilian Portuguese: A Study Based on the Heuristic Model of T.J. Cooper

The primary research question addressed in this study is, how do native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese process American English idioms? The author adapted a previous study by Thomas C. Cooper (1999), employing the think-aloud method: informants were asked to verbalize their thoughts as they resolved the meanings of the idioms, as presented in the Idiom Recognition Test (IRT). In contrast to Cooper’s 1999 study, the author questioned informants of a single L1 group; native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. The results showed that the native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese experienced less difficulty than the 1999 group understanding the same idioms. They also employed the same strategies but in different proportions

Omani EFL Learners' Proficiency in Using Idiomatic Expressions: Researched Pedagogical Perspectives

The purpose of this pretest/posttest quasi-experimental study was to explore the strategies English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students use on understanding the meanings of idioms both in oral and written submissions. The study also investigated the strategies on comprehending the meaning of idioms and improving idiomatic vocabularies in the language learning processes to both English teachers and students. Further, the study began to identify the criteria of idiom and idiom-understanding aspects so that the identified EFL students will be able to guess and become familiar with frequently used idioms and their desired contexts.Omani university students in English 101 Basic Academic English course comprised the experimental (n=30) and control (n=30) groups. Both groups were exposed to the same curriculum and set of idioms. The experimental group received direct instructions: (pictures, videos and discussions) while learning idioms and the control group received input through traditional methods of lecturing in learning idioms. Students completed the Inference Task (Al-­‐hassan, Haidar 2007) as pretest and posttest. Results indicated that Direct Instruction of idioms provided significant improvement of students’ performance on the Inference Task. Given the positive study outcomes, EFL teachers would benefit from incorporating visual aids, direct instructions and active discussions which will automatically support specific common idioms, increase students’ comprehension and thereby their communication skills. Keywords: Omani EFL learners, idiomatic expressions, proficiency, direct instruction, inference tas

Omani English Language Learners’ Proficiency with Idioms

The purpose of this pretest/posttest quasi-experimental study was to explore the strategies English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students use on understanding the meanings of idioms both in oral and written submissions. The study also investigated the strategies on comprehending the meaning of idioms and improving idiomatic vocabularies in the language learning processes to both English teachers and students. Further, the study began to identify the criteria of idiom and idiom-understanding aspects so that the identified EFL students will be able to guess and become familiar with frequently used idioms and their desired contexts. Omani university students in English 101 comprised the experimental (n=30) and control (n=30) groups. Both groups were exposed to the same curriculum and set of idioms. The experimental group received direct instructions: (pictures, videos and discussions) while learning idioms and the control group received traditional methods in learning idioms: lecturing. Students completed the Inference Task Al-­‐hassan, Haidar (2007)as pretest and posttest. Results indicated that Direct Instruction of idioms provided significant improvement of student performance on the Interference Task. Given the study outcomes, teachers of English as a foreign language would benefit from incorporating visual aids and active discussions which will automatically support specific common idioms. Direct instructions such as designing a daily plan to have the idiom of the day posted in the students’ walls may significantly increase students\u27 comprehension

The Interplay of Cross-Linguistic Differences and Context in L2 Idiom Comprehension

The present study investigates to what extent the effect of cross-linguistic differences on L2 idiom comprehension is modulated by the presence of a context. Sixty students of German as a foreign language (L1 French) completed a comprehension test consisting of metaphorical idioms in the L2 that differed from their L1 equivalents conceptually and formally and were presented with or without context. The results show that an increasing degree of conceptual and formal distance as well as the absence of context are generally associated with lower performance in the idiom comprehension test. However, the analysis of interactions shows that the presence of the context was especially supportive for conceptually different items, whereas the facilitative effect of formal similarity considerably diminished with increasing conceptual distance

'Self-help which ennobles a nation': development, citizenship, and the obligations of eating in India's austerity years

In the years immediately following independence, India's political leadership, assisted by a network of civic organizations, sought to transform what, how, and how much Indians ate. These campaigns, this article argues, embodied a broader post-colonial project to reimagine the terms of citizenship and development in a new nation facing enduring scarcity. Drawing upon wartime antecedent, global ideologies of population and land management, and an ethos of austerity imbued with the power to actualize economic self-reliance, the new state urged its citizens to give up rice and wheat, whose imports sapped the nation of the foreign currency needed for industrial development. In place of these staples, India's new citizens were asked to adopt ‘substitute’ and ‘subsidiary’ foods—including bananas, groundnuts, tapioca, yams, beets, and carrots—and give up a meal or more each week to conserve India's scant grain reserves. And as Indian planners awaited the possibility of fundamental agricultural advance and agrarian reform, they looked to food technology and the promise of ‘artificial rice’ as a means of making up for India's perennial food deficit. India's women, as anchors of the household—and therefore, the nation—were tasked with facilitating these dietary transformations, and were saddled with the blame when these modernist projects failed. Unable to marshal the resources needed to undertake fundamental agricultural reform, India's planners placed greater faith in their ability to exercise authority over certain aspects of Indian citizenship itself, tying the remaking of practices and sentiments to the reconstruction of a self-reliant national economy.Accepted manuscrip

Idiom learning materials for Estonian secondary school students

Käesoleva magistritöö eesmärk on koostada õppematerjalid idioomide õpetamiseks Eesti üldhariduskoolide gümnaasiumiastmes õppivatele õpilastele, mida saaks kasutada nii täiendava materjalina Upstream Intermediate B2 (2008) õpiku idioomide õppimisel kui ka iseseisva õppevahendina. Wray (2000) on kindel, et idioomide omandamisel on väga tähtis roll edukas keele õppimises. Ülaltoodud väite alust moodustavate põhjuste hulka kuuluvad näiteks võõrkeeleõppijate vajadus mõista emakeelekõnelejate diskursust, rääkida nende moodi, et näidata saavutatud võõrkeeleoskust ning mõista sihtkultuuri ja selle esindajate identiteeti. Magistritöö koosneb neljast peatükist. Sissejuhatus annab ülevaate idioomidest kui keelenähtusest eristades idioomi mõiste kitsa ja laia tähenduse ning arutledes idioomidele omistatavate omaduste ja seni loodud klassifikatsioonide üle. Lisaks tuuakse selles tööosas põhjendused, miks idioomid väärivad õppimist kooli inglise keele tundides. Peatüki lõpus tutvustatakse uurimisküsimused, millele magistritöö peab vastused andma

The role of constituents in multiword expressions: An interdisciplinary, cross-lingual perspective

Multiword expressions (MWEs), such as noun compounds (e.g. nickname in English, and Ohrwurm in German), complex verbs (e.g. give up in English, and aufgeben in German) and idioms (e.g. break the ice in English, and das Eis brechen in German), may be interpreted literally but often undergo meaning shifts with respect to their constituents. Theoretical, psycholinguistic as well as computational linguistic research remain puzzled by when and how MWEs receive literal vs. meaning-shifted interpretations, what the contributions of the MWE constituents are to the degree of semantic transparency (i.e., meaning compositionality) of the MWE, and how literal vs. meaning-shifted MWEs are processed and computed. This edited volume presents an interdisciplinary selection of seven papers on recent findings across linguistic, psycholinguistic, corpus-based and computational research fields and perspectives, discussing the interaction of constituent properties and MWE meanings, and how MWE constituents contribute to the processing and representation of MWEs. The collection is based on a workshop at the 2017 annual conference of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS) that took place at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, German