Core and boundaries of the notion of Phraseme Construction

Abstract

Phraseme constructions (PhraCons), also known as constructional idioms, can be most simply defined as syntactic patterns consisting of lexically fixed anchor words and empty slots for fillers. The article discusses the most important morphosyntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties of PhraCons as compared to similar construction types (e. g., lexically fully specified idioms or fully schematic syntactic idioms). It is shown that PhraCons are characterised by a group of features which are all nuanced rather than categorical in nature. This notwithstanding, PhraCons can be discerned by these features as constructions in their own right.

Keywords

• phraseme constructions
• constructional idioms
• syntactic phraseology
• syntactic idioms