Phraseology at the intersection of grammar, culture and statistics

Phraseology is deeply rooted in culture and history. The clear implication is that phraseology should take into account the amazing diversity of languages and cultures. Although there is no complete agreement on the ranking of the most spoken languages of the world, Chinese (Mandarin), English, Span...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Yearbook of Phraseology
Main Author: Colson, Jean-Pierre
Other Authors: UCL - SSH/ILC/PLIN - Pôle de recherche en linguistique, UCL - SSH/ILC - Institut Langage et Communication
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Walterde Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1515/phras-2016-0001
http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/179670
Description
Summary:Phraseology is deeply rooted in culture and history. The clear implication is that phraseology should take into account the amazing diversity of languages and cultures. Although there is no complete agreement on the ranking of the most spoken languages of the world, Chinese (Mandarin), English, Spanish and Hindi are often cited as the four most spoken languages, and we should never forget that three of them are Indo-European languages, probably sharing many common phraseological features. If phraseology is to become a theory, or if we wish to make claims about the theoretical underpinnings of phraseological hypotheses, they should not only be tested against English and other European languages, but against very different languages selected from the whole palette of linguistic diversity, from the very agglutinating Inuit languages at one extreme, to the most isolating languages at the other end, with for instance Chinese languages and Vietnamese.