science

Phraseology

Phraseology is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Phraseology rather than just read about it. In short: In linguistics, phraseology is the study of set or fixed expressions, such as idioms, phrasal verbs, and other types of multi-word lexical units (often collectively referred to as phrasemes), in which the component parts of the expression take on a meaning more specific than, or otherwise not predictable from, the sum of their meanings when used independently. For example, ‘Dutch auction’ is composed of the words Du…

Key takeaways

Phraseology belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Phraseology to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Phraseology from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

In linguistics, phraseology is the study of set or fixed expressions, such as idioms, phrasal verbs, and other types of multi-word lexical units (often collectively referred to as phrasemes), in which the component parts of the expression take on a meaning more specific than, or otherwise not predictable from, the sum of their meanings when used independently. For example, ‘Dutch auction’ is composed of the words Dutch ‘of or pertaining to the Netherlands’ and auction ‘a public sale in which goods are sold to the highest bidder’, but its meaning is not ‘a sale in the Netherlands where goods are sold to the highest bidder’; instead, the phrase has a conventionalized meaning referring to any auction where, instead of rising, the prices fall.

History Phraseology (from Greek φράσις phrasis, "way of speaking" and -λογία -logia, "study of") is a scholarly approach to language which developed in the twentieth century. It took its start when Charles Bally's notion of locutions phraseologiques entered Russian lexicology and lexicography in the 1930s and 1940s and was subsequently developed in the former Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries. From the late 1960s on it established itself in (East) German linguistics but was also sporadically approached in English linguistics. The earliest English adaptations of phraseology are by Weinreich (1969) within the approach of transformational grammar, Arnold (1973), and Lipka (1992 [1974]). In Great Britain as well as other Western European countries, phraseology has steadily been developed over the last twenty years. The activities of the European Society of Phraseology (EUROPHRAS) and the European Association for Lexicography (EURALEX) with their regular conventions and publications attest to the prolific European interest in phraseology. European scholarship in phraseology is more active than in North America. Bibliographies of recent studies on English and general phraseology are included in Welte (1990) and specially collected in Cowie & Howarth (1996) whose bibliography is reproduced and continued on the internet and provides a rich source of the most recent publications in the field.

Phraseological units

The basic units of analysis in phraseology are often referred to as phrasemes or phraseological units. Phraseological units are (according to Prof. Kunin A.V.) stable word-groups with partially or fully transferred meanings ("to kick the bucket", “Greek gift”, “drink till all's blue”, “drunk as a fiddler (drunk as a lord, as a boiled owl)”, “as mad as a hatter (as a march hare)”). According to Rosemarie Gläser, a phraseological unit is a lexicalized, reproducible bilexemic or polylexemic word group in common use, which has relative syntactic and semantic stability, may be idiomatized, may carry connotations, and may have an emphatic or intensifying function in a text.

References

Bibliography Altenberg, Bengt. 1998. ‘On the Phraseology of Spoken English: The Evidence of Recurrent Word-Combinations’, in Phraseology. Ed. A.P. Cowie. Oxford: Clarendon. Álvarez de la Granja, María, ed. 2008. Fixed Expressions in Cross-Linguistic Perspective. A Multilingual and Multidisciplinary Approach. Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovac. Amosova, N.N. 1963. Osnovi angliyskoy frazeologii. Leningrad. Anscombre, Jean-Claude & Salah Mejri, eds. 2011. Le figement linguistique : la parole entravée. Paris: Honoré Champion. Arsentieva, E.F. 2006. Frazeologiya i frazeografija v sopostavitel’nom aspekte (na materiale angliyskogo i russkogo yazikov). Kazan’. Burger, Harald, Dobrovol´skij, Dmitrij, Kuhn, Peter, & Norrrick, Neal, eds. 2007. Phraseology: An International Handbook of Contemporary Research. 2 vols. Berlin: de Gruyter. Cowie, A.P. 1998. Phraseology: Theory, Analysis, and Applications. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cherdantseva, T.Z. 2007. Jazik I ego obrazi: Ocherki po italyanskoy frazeologii. Moscow: URSS. Everaert, Martin, Erik-Jan van der Linden, André Schenk, & Rob Schreuder, eds. 1995. Idioms: Structural and Psychological perspective. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Gläser, Rosemarie. 1998. ‘The Stylistic Potential of Phraselological Units in the Light of Genre Analysis’, in Phraseology. Ed. A.P. Cowie. Oxford: Clarendon. Häusermann, Jürg. 1977. Phraseologie: Hauptprobleme der deutschen Phraseologie auf der Basis sowjetischer Forschungsergebnisse. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter. Knappe, Gabriele. 2004. Idioms and Fixed Expressions in English Language Study before 1800. Frankfort: Peter Lang. Kunin, A.V. 1967. ‘Osnovnie ponjatija angliyskoy frazeologii kak lingvisticheskoy disciplini’, in Anglo-russkiy frazeologicheskiy slovar. Moscow. pp. 1233–1264. Kunin, A.V. 1970. Angliyskaya frazeologiya. Moscow. Kunin, A.V. 1972. Frazeologija sovremennogo angliyskogo yazika. Moscow. Kunin, A.V. 1996. Kurs fraseologii sovremennogo angliyskogo yazika. 2-e izd. pererab. Moscow: Visshaya Shkola. Mel’čuk I.A. 1995. ‘Phrasemes in Language and Phraseology in Linguistics’, in Idioms: Structural and Psychological perspectives. Eds. Martin Everaert, Erik-Jan van der Linden, André Schenk, & Rob Schreuder. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 167–232. Mokienko, V.M. 1989. Slavjanskaya frazeologiya. Moscow: Visshaya Shkola. Molotkov, A.I. 1977. Osnovi frazeologii russkogo jazika. Leningrad: Nauka. Nazaryan, A.G. 1987. Frazeologiya sovremennogo frantsuzkogo jazika. Moscow. Raichshtein, A.D. 1980. Sopostavitelniy analiz nemetskoy I russkoy frazeologii. Moscow: Visshaya Shkola. Shanskiy, N.M. 1985. Frazeologiya sovremennogo russkogo yazika. Moscow: Visshaya Shkola. Soloduho, E.M. 1982. Problemi internazional'noy frazeoologii. Kazan’. Zhukov, V.P. 1978. Semantika frazeologicheskih oborotov. Moscow: Prosveshenie. Zuckermann, Ghil'ad. 2003. Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew. Palgrave Macmillan.

External links

фразеология – krugosvet.ru (in Russian) The European Society of Phraseology The European Association for Lexicography Phraseological seminar by Prof. V.M.Mokienko (in Russian) Interpretation of phraseology (in Ukrainian)

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Phraseology

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Phraseology claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Phraseology before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Phraseology ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Phraseology

In research: Phraseology appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Phraseology in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Phraseology is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Lexicology, Phraseology, Rhetoric, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Phraseology outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Phraseology in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Phraseology means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Phraseology out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Phraseology in simple terms?

Why does Phraseology matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Phraseology?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Phraseology.