Usage-based Phraseology of Italian

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Elmar Schafroth
• Subject Area: Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics ; General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: from 2018 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 398306818

The aim of the GEPHRI project is the application of Construction Grammar, with special focus on a corpus-based approach and a holistic description of form and meaning, to Italian phraseology in the form of a lexicographic platform for German speakers (esp. for advanced learners of a foreign language and second language learners (L2)). Apart from CxG, the theoretical basis of this project will be inspired by Fillmore’s U-Semantics as well as his Frame Semantics, since the description of relevant knowledge of idioms, being only comprehensible and ascertainable when studied in context, is indispensable for the active command of idioms. Idioms, similar to lexemes, are part of a wider system of knowledge and are syntactically, sematic-pragmatically, and partly also in terms of discourse function, marked by idiosyncrasy. Thus the characteristic linguistic elements related to these idioms on a paradigmatic or syntagmatic level will be described on the basis of corpora of the Ital. lang. embedded in a format, called PhraseoFrame – esp. the needs of L2 learners will be taken into consideration. The division of the defining categories into a basic and a detail mode is supposed to provide the possibility for users to individually determine the complexity and the scope of the represented knowledge by themselves. The lexicographic basis will be formed by the 500 most frequently used and most common idioms of the dictionary by Quartu/Rossi 2012, as identified as such in the preliminary phase of the project. Although the (total of 600) idioms will be processed primarily for a German-speaking target group, the translation of the metatexts into Italian, which is also a planned part of the project, shall amplify the benefit for an Italian-speaking, respectively an international audience, and especially provide L2 learners with the benefits of a bilingual description. By assigning the idioms to semantic fields like ‘indifference’, ‘anger’, ‘pettiness’, they are embedded into cognitive networks, which illustrate the connection between the different idioms and also include other concept-related lexemes. Based on 4 reference corpora, the special features of each idiom will be described according to 3 formal and semantic levels of description (Croft 2001) in order to ensure maximum benefit for L2-users (as well as for other users). The empirical study of idioms often provides information on use, meaning and form that is not documented in standard dictionaries, but is crucial from a learner’s perspective. As a further support, this information will continuously be illustrated with example sentences and thus be made accessible to the user in a comprehensible way. The final digital product includes a search mask that leads to an alphabetically structured list of all idioms containing the particular key term. However, there will also be the possibility to adjust the structure according to semantic fields or other types of information.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Italy
• Cooperation Partner: Professorin Dr. Sibilla Cantarini