Italian Phrasemes as Constructions: How to Understand and Use Them

Abstract

Abstract:The present article describes the objectives and methods for a learner-centered description of Italian idioms based on the theoretical principles of Construction Grammar (CxG). The aim of the underlying research project is to develop a new way of looking at idioms, taking into account all linguistic aspects that could help to fully understand and usethem in a formally and functionally adequate manner, including situational and discursive features. By phrasemes we understand different kinds of word combinations characterized by idiomaticity and/or entrenchment. I will focus here on (a) "predicative phrasemes" (typically figurative and containing an inflected verb as a predicate, also called expressions idiomatiques verbales), (b) "phraseotemplates" (lexically open or formal idioms, in German phraseology Phraseoschablonen) and (c) "pragmatemes" (according to the French term pragmatème, i.e. pragmatically highly conventionalized phrases, also called expressions-énoncés). Idiomaticity is characterized by non compositionality of its components and unpredictability of the whole structure. Italian examples for each of the three types are: (a) Tenere il piede in due staffe ('to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds'), (b) Cosa me lo chiedi a fare? ('Why are you asking me at all?') and (c) In bocca al lupo! ('Break a leg'). In chapter 2 I will first discuss basic concepts of Construction Grammar and Cognitive Grammar. In the following part (chapter 3) I will present my ideas about CxG and its ability to create a greater awareness of how many word combinations (in this context called constructions) in a language are idiosyncratic and unpredictable and about how to use fundamental theoretical issues of usage-based CxG (mainly Goldberg, Croft) and unification-based approaches in order to describe idioms in a new holistic way. Chapter 4 will deal with some important classifications of phrasemes and their practical aptitude for phraseodidactics. Chapter 5 will finally present my idea of applying methods of Construction Grammar and Fillmore's semantics of understanding to build a new digital lexicographical format for phrasemes which is going to be called phraseoframe. This will be illustrated for the three types of phrasemes mentioned above. Each phraseme will be described by means of a simple meta language which is easy to understand and has links to prosodic, morphological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic and discourse functional properties. As my approach is corpus based empirical evidence will be given for each of the three types of idioms by using several corpora of Italian spoken and written language (e.g., BADIP, PAISÀ and WEBBIT).

Costruzioni a schema fisso in alcune varietà diatopiche d’Italia.

“…le patterned constructions di Casadei 1995 e i gradi di flagging di Simone 2007Simone , 2017, gli studi applicati (cf. l'indagine relativa alla didattica di tali strutture in ambiente L2 di Imperiale/Schafroth 2016), e i case studies sull'italiano, tra cui le costruzioni superlative analizzate (Berlanda 2013), la costruzione sì che esaminata (Schafroth 2015), nonché gli studi sugli schemi sintagmatici preposizionali con funzione avverbiale e aggettivale (Piunno 2015(Piunno , 2018, le costruzioni obbligatoriamente negate (Piunno 2018), gli studi sull'intensificazione (Piunno 2023), e sulle costruzioni comparative (Mollica/Schafroth 2018). Di recente, il tema è stato analizzato anche in prospettiva diacronica, con particolare attenzione alle costruzioni preposizionali dell'italiano antico (Ganfi/Piunno 2017; Piunno/Ganfi 2019), e anche in ottica contrastiva col francese e lo spagnolo (Piunno/Ganfi 2021; Ganfi/Piunno 2022).…”

“…7 Cf Ziem (2008Ziem ( , 2018,. Lasch/Ziem (2011), Ziem/Lasch (2013),Schafroth (2015Schafroth ( , 2019Schafroth ( , 2020, Mellado Blanco (2015, 2020a e b), López Meirama/MelladoBlanco (2018),Piunno (2018, 2022, 2024, in stampa a), Steyer (2018. Per una rassegna dettagliata relativa agli studi dedicati a questo tema, cf.…”

How to Apply CxG to Phraseology: A Multilingual Research Project

“…This conception also has advantages in the teaching area (Mollica, 2015;Schafroth, 2015). It is thanks to this continuum between lexicon and syntax that the constructions and thus also phraseologisms, can present varying degrees of concreteness and/or abstraction.…”