Italian Phrasemes As Constructions: How To Understand And Use Them

SKY journal of linguistics, 2005

This paper focuses on multi-word expressions, i.e. lexical units larger than a word that can bear both idiomatic and compositional meanings. Multi-word expressions are a privileged domain for the study of the syntax-lexicon relationship, which is also the main concern of current theoretical approaches such as Construction Grammar. In particular, the paper provides a synchronic and diachronic analysis of a particular (and quite neglected) kind of multi-word expression, i.e. Italian verb-particle constructions. The synchronic part provides a syntactic and semantic analysis of these complex predicates: their syntactic and semantic behaviour will be taken as evidence of their structural cohesion. The second part deals with the development of verb-particle constructions in Italian and provides original diachronic data that will shed new light on the issue. Finally, we will draw some theoretical conclusions from the analyses and show how the findings seem to speak in favour of a constructional approach to verbparticle constructions and to multi-word expressions in general. ) for their comments. Last but not least, I would like to thank the two reviewers for considerably improving the form and the contents of the paper. All remaining errors are of course mine. 1 Here the term multi-word expression is used as a pre-theoretical label to include the range of phenomena that goes from collocations to fixed expressions.

Ecological Psychology, 2015

In this contribution, I investigated the structure of Italian idioms from a perspective that combines insights from constructionist and dynamic-systems approaches to language. First of all, I empirically analyzed the occurrences of a sample of constructions downloaded from the itTenTen corpus, interrogated via the online corpus-query system Sketch Engine. On the basis of the tendencies observed in the analysis, I observed that the patterns of stability and variation of idioms in use can be satisfactorily accounted for in dynamic-systems terms. I then argue that the use of idiomatic constructions is governed by a principle of causal circularity, whereby the attractor state constrains the possible use of a construction, but at the same time the bulk of occurrences of an idiom shapes the attractor in an ongoing, nonlinear process of self-organization. Looking beyond idioms, I propose that similar mechanisms may regulate the functioning of the linguistic system as a whole, consistent with the constructionist view of language as a network of interconnected units.

2017

The paper presents results of our investigation of the distribution of idioms across diatheses (voice alternations) in English and Hebrew. We propose an account and discuss its consequences for idiom storage and its implications for alternative architectures of grammar. We provide evidence that idioms split into two distinct subtypes, which we label "phrasal" versus "clausal" idioms. Based on idiom surveys, we observe that phrasal idioms can be specific to the transitive, the unaccusative or the adjectival passive diathesis, but cannot be specific to the verbal passive. Clausal idioms, in contrast, do not discriminate between diatheses: they tend to be specific to a single diathesis. These findings, we argue, cannot be accommodated by a Construction Grammar approach, such as Goldberg (2006), which assumes knowledge of language consists merely of an inventory of stored 'constructions', and does not distinguish between a storage module versus a computationa...

PhD dissertation, Lancaster University, 2015

In traditional generative linguistic theories, idiomatic constructions are seen as a sort of “anomaly”, and dismissed as non-decomposable items of non-literal language, uninteresting and “peripheral”. Contrary to this view, in the last decades psycholinguistic and corpus-linguistic studies have shown that idioms can often undergo structural modification and display different variation patterns, according to their specific formal and semantic properties. In virtue of these findings, the present study aims to investigate the levels of stability and variation in Italian idioms from a socio-cognitive point of view, in a two-step fashion. In the first stage, a set of 150 idiomatic constructions will be selected from a dictionary (Sorge 2010) and, taking the categorization proposed by Langlotz (2006a) as a starting point, a cognitively motivated typology of Italian idiomatic constructions will be drawn. Langlotz's parameters and categories will be used to classify Italian idioms into a structured taxonomy based on a set of notions which are generally accepted and employed by proponents of functionally-oriented approaches to language; these notions will be applied taking the Italian cultural context into consideration, in order to avoid (potentially hasty) claims about their supposed universality. Then, the mutual relationship between different idioms on the one hand and between idiomatic and non-idiomatic constructions on the other hand will be addressed and accounted for in the light of a constructionist perspective on language. In the second part of my study, a sample of occurrences of a subset of 50 idiomatic constructions will be downloaded from a large Italian corpus, in order to observe their variational behavior in the context of actual interactions in a contemporary setting. Particular attention will be paid to the potential correlation between the category an idiom was allocated to in the previous stage and the variation patterns observed in its occurrences, with the specific aim to understand if a causal connection can be established between the idiom category and the (quantitative and qualitative) level of variation observed in real language data. The two phases of the study will be treated as deeply interconnected, and a dynamic-systems approach will be adopted to highlight the several links between the two stages. An integrated model of the mechanisms which regulate the “life-dynamics” of idiomatic constructions will be provided, taking distinct dimensions, time-scales, and levels of granularity into account. Finally, the results of the study will be scrutinized in order to assess the adequacy of a dynamic-systems perspective to accurately explore and describe the self-organizing nature of linguistic constructions and their relationship with other aspects of human cognition and interactivity.

Romanica Olomucensia, 2020

The main objective of this paper is to examine schematic idioms from a crosslinguistic perspective. First, this type of lexical-syntactic structure is discussed in the light of Phraseology (1) and Construction Grammar (2), as well as in a broader theoretical context (3). Then the most important characteristics of schematic idioms are summarized (4) and problems of cross-linguistic comparability are raised from the point of view of Construction Grammar (5). Then the differences between schematic idioms and phraseological models are discussed (6). In particular, the interfaces between schematic idioms and other types of phrasemes are examined (6.1) and an attempt is made to distinguish between phraseological models, structural formulae, and schematic idioms (6.2). Several case studies on (presumably) non-comparable schematic idioms (7.1) and comparable ones (7.2) constitute the empirical core of the paper. These are [Wie ADJ ist DAS denn] and [X kann auch Y] (in 7.1), as well as [S1 PREP S1], [X ist der/die/das neue Y], the Incredulity Response Construction, and the WXDY Construction (in 7.2). Finally, general conclusions are drawn on the subject (8.1), methodological issues are taken into account (8.2), and research wishes are formulated (8.3

Technological innovation put to the service of language learning, translation and interpreting: Insights from academic and professional contexts, 2023

This investigation proposes a corpus- based approach to the study of comparative constructional idioms in Spanish and their counterparts in English and French. Under the view that phraseological comparisons can be best analysed as a type of constructional idiom, this study aims at describing these semi- schematic patterns as productive phenomena – both by means of type frequency and analogical extensions – and in relation to grammatical comparisons – formally equivalent constructions may be interrelated in the construction by means of family resemblance relationships. With the OPUS2 Spanish parallel corpus of Sketch Engine, we aim at examining the translation of the [más feo que X], [feo como X], [más tonto que X] and [tonto como X] constructional idioms, paying special attention to translation techniques as well as constructional counterparts.

Contrastive Phraseology, 2020

This article examines the question of whether (or to what extent) equivalence between idiomatic expressions in different languages is possible. As equivalence is understood here in a broad sense to include all linguistic levels and all types of knowledge about a phraseological unit, it turns out to be very difficult to maintain the claim of interlingual equivalence with regard to idioms. Based on the theoretical framework of Construction Grammar and focusing on linguistic data provided by corpora, I will discuss some types of pseudo-equivalence between Italian and German idioms, also taking into account other languages. The objective of this article is to raise awareness among foreign languages teachers and learners as well as among linguists about the main types of idiosyncrasy that characterize phraseological units.

Europhras 2021 Conference, September 6-9, 2021, Proceedings., 2023

In line with the usage-based constructionist approach (Goldberg 1995, 2006; Bybee 2013), along with the theories about polirematiche (Voghera 2004, Squillante 2016), this research aims to show that in Italian some specific multiword expressions (MWE) express Manner through the use of indefinite items such as niente ('nothing'), qualcosina ('something.DIM.'), certo ('a certain'). These approaches argue that in language use speakers create and recognise as units MWEs characterised by syntactic peculiarities and non-compositional semantics. They can be defined as constructions and as their frequency increases, so does the conventionalisation of a new meaning and of a new conceptual association. In this respect, this research discusses the emerging conceptual association between Indefinite Quantity and Manner sense, along with an analysis of MWEs' syntactic and semantic peculiarities.

Productive Patterns in Phraseology and Construction Grammar. A Multilingual Approach, 2021

This study adopts the view that phraseological comparisons underlie constructional idioms, given that they can be considered partially lexically filled patterns, that is, form-meaning pairings endowed with a pragmatic meaning. Against this background, the [más feo que X] (‘very ugly’) construction is analysed on the basis of the esTenTen18 corpus, which yields a total of 1,108 occurrences with the intensifying meaning. Under the assumption that Construction Grammar is a much more suitable approach for the study of semi-schematic constructions than traditional Phraseology, this contribution aims to describe the five different senses that the construction can adopt, as well as to identify the conceptual fields of the slots that motivate its instances. Considering productivity and creativity are two sides of the same coin, the study determines whether Spanish speakers use more creative instances of the construction or lexicalised idioms, among which we focus on the highly entrenched [más feo que pegarle a un padre] micro-construction in order to analyse its productivity on the basis of its modifications and creative extensions attested in the corpus.

Behavior Research Methods, 2011

The present study reports descriptive normative measures for 245 Italian verbal idiomatic expressions. For each of the idiomatic expressions the following variables are reported: Length, Knowledge, Familiarity, Age of Acquisition, Predictability, Syntactic flexibility, Literality and Compositionality. Syntactic flexibility was assessed using five syntactic operations: adverb insertion, adjective insertion, left dislocation, passive and movement. The psycholinguistic relevance of each dimension, their measures and the correlations among them are provided and discussed. The databases are freely available for down-loading from the Psychonomic Society Web archive at www.psychonomic.org/archive/.