German constructional phrasemes and their Russian counterparts

Abstract

In this article I examine a group of semi-fixed German expressions that are irregular with regard to the relationship between form and meaning, namely constructional phrasemes with the deictic elements her ‘hither’ and hin ‘thither’ [vor sich her + V] and [vor sich hin + V]. These constructions pose considerable difficulties not only for the description of their semantics, but also for translation into other languages. Languages such as Russian, English and French do not have exact equivalents of the German deictic elements hin and her. In cases where the German deictic elements her and hin are constituents of relatively fixed and irregular constructions, their meaning fits even less well their standard definition. Using corpus examples, I propose a means of describing these constructional phrasemes in a German-Russian dictionary.