Document details

Nine months of winter, three of scorching hell: Portuguese meteorological adage...

Author(s): Martins, Cláudia Susana Nunes cv logo 1

Date: 2013

Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10198/8742

Origin: Biblioteca Digital do IPB

Subject(s): Compositionality; Idiomaticity; Frozenness; Meteorological adages


Description
This paper intends to discuss the topic of fixed language from a linguistic standpoint, namely resorting to concepts of phraseology and paremiology. These will enable us to approach the problematic issue of word combinations, which are traditionally divided into free combinations and restricted combinations, and also consider their main characteristics, mainly lexicalisation, non-compositionality, syntactic irregularity (or frozenness) and semantic irregularity (or idiomaticity). The latter combinations comprise, for example, collocations, idiomatic expressions and proverbs, which account for the major output of human speakers – people speak in set phrases, as Mel’čuk (1998) upholds. However, restricted word combinations are culturally-bound and, as such, should be understood within the history and culture that produced them. One such case concerns the use of meteorological adages in Portugal, an extremely productive collection of popular sayings which aim at summarising weather observation made by consecutive generations and concluding about their influence and effect on farming throughout the year.
Document Type Part of book or chapter of book
Language English
delicious logo  facebook logo  linkedin logo  twitter logo 
degois logo
mendeley logo


    Financiadores do RCAAP

Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia Universidade do Minho   Governo Português Ministério da Educação e Ciência Programa Operacional da Sociedade do Conhecimento EU