Fabio Mollica | Università degli Studi di Milano - State University of Milan (Italy) (original) (raw)

Papers by Fabio Mollica

Research paper thumbnail of I Funktionsverbgefüge tra didattica del tedesco come lingua straniera e Leichte Sprache

Il tedesco tra lingua difficile e “lingua facile” Prospettive sulla Leichte Sprache, 2024

'Funktionsverbgefüge' (FVG) (e.g. zum Ausdruck bringen 'to express' or in Gang setzen 'to set in ... more 'Funktionsverbgefüge' (FVG) (e.g. zum Ausdruck bringen 'to express' or in Gang setzen 'to set in motion') represent a real challenge in language production for German learners. In this article, I will briefly present the main characteristics of FVG and then turn with an empirical study to their description in (mono- and bilingual) dictionaries and in German didactic grammars. The two tests conducted offer preliminary empirical data on pos-sible difficulties for Italian-speaking students with regard to these word combinations. The article also discusses the use of FVG in Leichte Sprache (German Easy Language) and the relationship between Leichte Sprache and the teaching of German as a foreign language. The latter can provide Leichte Sprache with useful categories for reflecting on which phenomena are actual-ly challenging for non-native speakers with limited language skills. At the same time, some principles of this simplified variety of German may be use-ful for the design of teaching materials.

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Research paper thumbnail of The ditransitive construction and the double accusative construction as allostructions: Corpus-based analysis and pedagogical applications

Ampersand, 2024

The study explores the challenges encountered by Italian-speaking students with the learning of t... more The study explores the challenges encountered by Italian-speaking students with the learning of the German ditransitive construction. While prior research has extensively covered theoretical aspects of this construction, limited attention has been paid to its practical implications for foreign language learning. The study further elaborates on a related construction involving a similar semantics but realized with two accusative objects. Verbs which can fuse with this construction are e.g. "lehren" ('to teach'), "abfragen" ('to interrogate/to test') or "abhören" ('to test orally'). This related construction is often overlooked in language learning materials. The paper addresses this gap by combining empirical evidence from two pretests with Italian learners and a usage-based approach with corpus data, focusing on the verb "lehren". The findings contribute to a better understanding and a more authentic description of the ditransitive construction. In a more theoretical perspective, the paper further discusses the relationship between the ditransitive and the double accusative construction in terms of 'allostructions', again with a focus on instantiations with the verb "lehren". The insights gained with the study can help foster the learning of both constructions.

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Research paper thumbnail of Valenz, interne und externe Syntax bei Phrasemen. Konstruktionsgrammatische und begriffstheoretische Überlegungen anhand des Deutschen und Italienischen

Peter Lang, 2021

In this article, the concepts of "internal" and "external valency" are critically reviewed in app... more In this article, the concepts of "internal" and "external valency" are critically reviewed in application to German and Italian phrasemes (especially collocations and verbal idioms). It turns out that these concepts and the theoretical assumptions that go along with them are not suitable for an adequate, usage-based description. Instead, preference is given to the conception of an internal and external syntax of phrasemes, which allows to capture all recurrent and frequent syntagmatic modifications and all typical cotexts of a phraseme. Important for this approach, based on Construction Grammar, is an extended valency concept and the consistent corpus-based exploration of the modification area and the modification potential within and outside of phrasemes. In a concluding chapter, arguments are presented which also underline a profitable foreign language teaching use of this approach

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Research paper thumbnail of Ditransitive Kollokationen: eine konstruktionsgrammatische Untersuchung aus der DaF-Perspektive

Deutsch als Fremdsprache 61(1), 2024

German collocations with a ditransitive structure constitute a major challenge for learners of Ge... more German collocations with a ditransitive structure constitute a major challenge for learners of German. Although
they have the same abstract semantic and syntactic pattern as the corresponding non-phraseological instantiations, they are characterized by idiosyncratic features. Using empirical tests our study addresses thevdifficulties encountered by Italian-speaking learners when learning ditransitive collocations. We argue in favor of a learning method which combines a construction-based approach and structural priming.

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Research paper thumbnail of Causal constructions with colour adjectives: A contrastive approach

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Research paper thumbnail of Konstruktionsfamilien im Deutschen: Begriffsverständnis, Forschungsstand und Konzeption des Bandes

Konstruktionsgrammatik IX: Konstruktionsfamilien im Deutschen, 2023

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Research paper thumbnail of Yearbook of Phraseology 14 - Editorial

Yearbook of Phraseology - Editorial, 2023

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Research paper thumbnail of Collocazioni nella lessicografia bilingue (italiano-tedesco): i dizionari sono realmente user-friendly?

In: Autelli, Erica / Konecny, Christine / Lusito, Stefano (a cura di): Dialektale und zweisprachige Phraseographie – Fraseografia dialettale e bilingue - Fraseografía dialectal y bilingüe.Tübingen: Julius Groos im Stauffenburg-Verlag, 241-268., 2023

This article deals with the user-friendliness of bilingual (Italian-German) dictionaries. It focu... more This article deals with the user-friendliness of bilingual (Italian-German) dictionaries. It focuses
more specifically on the use of dictionaries by Italian-speaking learners of German and presents
two tests which consist in the translation of sentences with collocations into German (test 1) and
into Italian (test 2). These tests allow, on the one hand, to understand users’ skills, their expectations
and problems when consulting the dictionary and, on the other hand, they highlight some
of the dictionary’s limitations, thus allowing a metalexicographical analysis. Dictionary usage
research and dictionary critique can contribute to the constant improvement of dictionaries,
making them more user-friendly and more accurate in their presentation, because it is only by
observing the “user-in-actu” (Wiegand 1998: 501) that weaknesses and ambiguities in the dictionaries
can be discovered.

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Research paper thumbnail of Metaphors and frames in the German and Italian (media)discourse on migration

In diesem Beitrag wird korpusbasiert, qualitativ und aus kontrastiver Sicht anhand ausgewählter E... more In diesem Beitrag wird korpusbasiert, qualitativ und aus kontrastiver Sicht anhand ausgewählter Einzelbeispiele untersucht, welchen Beitrag die Frame-Semantik bei der Analyse konzeptueller Metaphern im aktuellen Migrationsdiskurs in der deutschen und italienischen Presse leisten kann. Sie macht es möglich, unterschiedliche Perspektivierungen bei der Betrachtung des Phänomens herauszukristallisieren, da semantische Frames ein facettenreiches Angebot für den Blickwinkel der Betrachtung bereitstellen. Auch Metaphern selbst besitzen diese Eigenschaft der Perspektivierung, vor allem auch solche, die charakteristisch für einen kulturspezifischen Kontext stehen. Zu den Möglichkeiten, die der Einsatz von Metaphern bietet, zählt vor allem der "Highlighting und Hiding"-Effekt (LAKOFF/JOHNSON 1980), indem Metaphern bestimmte Aspekte betonen oder verdunkeln. Um welche es sich dabei im Einzelnen handelt, hängt von mehreren Faktoren ab, wie zum Beispiel der politischen Orientierung von ...

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Research paper thumbnail of Chapter 7. The family of German dative constructions

Constructing Families of Constructions

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Research paper thumbnail of Construction-based teaching of German verbless directives to Italian-speaking learners

Directions for Pedagogical Construction Grammar

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Research paper thumbnail of Phrasem-Konstruktionen in der heutigen Forschung: ein Überblick

Konstruktionen zwischen Lexikon und Grammatik

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Research paper thumbnail of Das interessiert mich einen X! Die intensivierende Konstruktionsfamilie der absoluten Interesselosigkeit im Spanischen, Italienischen und Deutschen

Konstruktionen zwischen Lexikon und Grammatik

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Research paper thumbnail of Funktionsverbgefüge in ein- und zweisprachigen Wörterbüchern (für das Sprachenpaar Deutsch-Italienisch) aus der Perspektive der DaF-Benutzer

Funktionsverbgefüge im Fokus

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Research paper thumbnail of Konzeptualisierung und Versprachlichung der Migration im dt. und ital. politischen Diskurs: erste Überlegungen

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Research paper thumbnail of Keine Antwort ist auch eine Antwort: analisi intra- e interlinguistica

The present research aims to describe the German pragmatic phraseme Keine Antwort ist auch eine A... more The present research aims to describe the German pragmatic phraseme Keine Antwort ist auch eine Antwort ('No answer is also an answer') from an intralingual perspective delineating its formal and functional features and, more specifically, its internal and external syntactic behaviour as well as its illocutionary force. In addition to its fixed and lexicalised form, the focus will be placed also on the "partially lexically filled constructions" (Goldberg 2006) [Kein(e) N1 ist auch ein(e) N1] 'No N1 is also a N1', i.e., a more abstract construction which is partially lexicalized and used in specific speech acts. With recourse to corpus data, the noun classes that more frequently occupy the N1 position will be identified. The phraseme Keine Antwort ist auch eine Antwort will be analysed also from an interlingual perspective; the problem of the equivalents in Italian will reflected upon and discussed.

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Research paper thumbnail of Kollokationen – kontrastiv, didaktisch, theoretisch: ein kurzer Überblick

Peter Lang, 2021

Diese Einleitung möchte einen aktuellen Überblick über angewandte und theoretische Aspekte kollok... more Diese Einleitung möchte einen aktuellen Überblick über angewandte und theoretische Aspekte kollokativer Einheiten aus kontrastiver Sicht geben. Dabei rücken folgende Aspekte in den Vordergrund: die Diskussion des Kollokationsbegriffs (auch im Hinblick auf den Fremdsprachenunterricht), die morphosyntaktisch-semantisch relevanten Gebrauchseigenschaften von Kollokationen, sowie ihre Behandlung in der Fremdsprachendidaktik (auch in Lehrwerken sowie anhand möglicher Übungstypologien) und in Wörterbüchern.

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Research paper thumbnail of Überlegungen zur Instrumenalisierung religiöser Entitäten im politischen Diskurs Silvio Berlusconis

Religion und Sprache, 2015

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Research paper thumbnail of Wörterbuchkritik und Wörterbuchbenutzungsforschung

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Research paper thumbnail of Kausalkonstruktionen mit Adjektiv im freien und fixierten Gebrauch

Linguistik Online, 2018

The study describes the semantic and conceptual variation of causal constructions with an adjecti... more The study describes the semantic and conceptual variation of causal constructions with an adjective as they are realized in German, French and Italian. In the framework of Goldberg’s (cf. 1995 and 2006) Construction Grammar, it discusses some defining properties of the analyzed constructions, like the formal and semantic (non-)predictability and their possible phraseological status based on metonymy or metaphor. Several constructions can be identified which convey different meanings, i. e. causality and/or excessiveness. The instantiations of the causal construction are linked to each other by inheritance links which make it possible to describe the variation as a network of constructions. The description of the examples’ variation with their defining properties allows us to advocate a continuum between free and fixed instantiations of the constructions and accordingly between Construction Grammar and Phraseology.

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Research paper thumbnail of I Funktionsverbgefüge tra didattica del tedesco come lingua straniera e Leichte Sprache

Il tedesco tra lingua difficile e “lingua facile” Prospettive sulla Leichte Sprache, 2024

'Funktionsverbgefüge' (FVG) (e.g. zum Ausdruck bringen 'to express' or in Gang setzen 'to set in ... more 'Funktionsverbgefüge' (FVG) (e.g. zum Ausdruck bringen 'to express' or in Gang setzen 'to set in motion') represent a real challenge in language production for German learners. In this article, I will briefly present the main characteristics of FVG and then turn with an empirical study to their description in (mono- and bilingual) dictionaries and in German didactic grammars. The two tests conducted offer preliminary empirical data on pos-sible difficulties for Italian-speaking students with regard to these word combinations. The article also discusses the use of FVG in Leichte Sprache (German Easy Language) and the relationship between Leichte Sprache and the teaching of German as a foreign language. The latter can provide Leichte Sprache with useful categories for reflecting on which phenomena are actual-ly challenging for non-native speakers with limited language skills. At the same time, some principles of this simplified variety of German may be use-ful for the design of teaching materials.

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Research paper thumbnail of The ditransitive construction and the double accusative construction as allostructions: Corpus-based analysis and pedagogical applications

Ampersand, 2024

The study explores the challenges encountered by Italian-speaking students with the learning of t... more The study explores the challenges encountered by Italian-speaking students with the learning of the German ditransitive construction. While prior research has extensively covered theoretical aspects of this construction, limited attention has been paid to its practical implications for foreign language learning. The study further elaborates on a related construction involving a similar semantics but realized with two accusative objects. Verbs which can fuse with this construction are e.g. "lehren" ('to teach'), "abfragen" ('to interrogate/to test') or "abhören" ('to test orally'). This related construction is often overlooked in language learning materials. The paper addresses this gap by combining empirical evidence from two pretests with Italian learners and a usage-based approach with corpus data, focusing on the verb "lehren". The findings contribute to a better understanding and a more authentic description of the ditransitive construction. In a more theoretical perspective, the paper further discusses the relationship between the ditransitive and the double accusative construction in terms of 'allostructions', again with a focus on instantiations with the verb "lehren". The insights gained with the study can help foster the learning of both constructions.

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Research paper thumbnail of Valenz, interne und externe Syntax bei Phrasemen. Konstruktionsgrammatische und begriffstheoretische Überlegungen anhand des Deutschen und Italienischen

Peter Lang, 2021

In this article, the concepts of "internal" and "external valency" are critically reviewed in app... more In this article, the concepts of "internal" and "external valency" are critically reviewed in application to German and Italian phrasemes (especially collocations and verbal idioms). It turns out that these concepts and the theoretical assumptions that go along with them are not suitable for an adequate, usage-based description. Instead, preference is given to the conception of an internal and external syntax of phrasemes, which allows to capture all recurrent and frequent syntagmatic modifications and all typical cotexts of a phraseme. Important for this approach, based on Construction Grammar, is an extended valency concept and the consistent corpus-based exploration of the modification area and the modification potential within and outside of phrasemes. In a concluding chapter, arguments are presented which also underline a profitable foreign language teaching use of this approach

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Research paper thumbnail of Ditransitive Kollokationen: eine konstruktionsgrammatische Untersuchung aus der DaF-Perspektive

Deutsch als Fremdsprache 61(1), 2024

German collocations with a ditransitive structure constitute a major challenge for learners of Ge... more German collocations with a ditransitive structure constitute a major challenge for learners of German. Although
they have the same abstract semantic and syntactic pattern as the corresponding non-phraseological instantiations, they are characterized by idiosyncratic features. Using empirical tests our study addresses thevdifficulties encountered by Italian-speaking learners when learning ditransitive collocations. We argue in favor of a learning method which combines a construction-based approach and structural priming.

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Research paper thumbnail of Causal constructions with colour adjectives: A contrastive approach

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Research paper thumbnail of Konstruktionsfamilien im Deutschen: Begriffsverständnis, Forschungsstand und Konzeption des Bandes

Konstruktionsgrammatik IX: Konstruktionsfamilien im Deutschen, 2023

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Research paper thumbnail of Yearbook of Phraseology 14 - Editorial

Yearbook of Phraseology - Editorial, 2023

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Research paper thumbnail of Collocazioni nella lessicografia bilingue (italiano-tedesco): i dizionari sono realmente user-friendly?

In: Autelli, Erica / Konecny, Christine / Lusito, Stefano (a cura di): Dialektale und zweisprachige Phraseographie – Fraseografia dialettale e bilingue - Fraseografía dialectal y bilingüe.Tübingen: Julius Groos im Stauffenburg-Verlag, 241-268., 2023

This article deals with the user-friendliness of bilingual (Italian-German) dictionaries. It focu... more This article deals with the user-friendliness of bilingual (Italian-German) dictionaries. It focuses
more specifically on the use of dictionaries by Italian-speaking learners of German and presents
two tests which consist in the translation of sentences with collocations into German (test 1) and
into Italian (test 2). These tests allow, on the one hand, to understand users’ skills, their expectations
and problems when consulting the dictionary and, on the other hand, they highlight some
of the dictionary’s limitations, thus allowing a metalexicographical analysis. Dictionary usage
research and dictionary critique can contribute to the constant improvement of dictionaries,
making them more user-friendly and more accurate in their presentation, because it is only by
observing the “user-in-actu” (Wiegand 1998: 501) that weaknesses and ambiguities in the dictionaries
can be discovered.

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Research paper thumbnail of Metaphors and frames in the German and Italian (media)discourse on migration

In diesem Beitrag wird korpusbasiert, qualitativ und aus kontrastiver Sicht anhand ausgewählter E... more In diesem Beitrag wird korpusbasiert, qualitativ und aus kontrastiver Sicht anhand ausgewählter Einzelbeispiele untersucht, welchen Beitrag die Frame-Semantik bei der Analyse konzeptueller Metaphern im aktuellen Migrationsdiskurs in der deutschen und italienischen Presse leisten kann. Sie macht es möglich, unterschiedliche Perspektivierungen bei der Betrachtung des Phänomens herauszukristallisieren, da semantische Frames ein facettenreiches Angebot für den Blickwinkel der Betrachtung bereitstellen. Auch Metaphern selbst besitzen diese Eigenschaft der Perspektivierung, vor allem auch solche, die charakteristisch für einen kulturspezifischen Kontext stehen. Zu den Möglichkeiten, die der Einsatz von Metaphern bietet, zählt vor allem der "Highlighting und Hiding"-Effekt (LAKOFF/JOHNSON 1980), indem Metaphern bestimmte Aspekte betonen oder verdunkeln. Um welche es sich dabei im Einzelnen handelt, hängt von mehreren Faktoren ab, wie zum Beispiel der politischen Orientierung von ...

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Research paper thumbnail of Chapter 7. The family of German dative constructions

Constructing Families of Constructions

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Research paper thumbnail of Construction-based teaching of German verbless directives to Italian-speaking learners

Directions for Pedagogical Construction Grammar

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Research paper thumbnail of Phrasem-Konstruktionen in der heutigen Forschung: ein Überblick

Konstruktionen zwischen Lexikon und Grammatik

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Research paper thumbnail of Das interessiert mich einen X! Die intensivierende Konstruktionsfamilie der absoluten Interesselosigkeit im Spanischen, Italienischen und Deutschen

Konstruktionen zwischen Lexikon und Grammatik

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Research paper thumbnail of Funktionsverbgefüge in ein- und zweisprachigen Wörterbüchern (für das Sprachenpaar Deutsch-Italienisch) aus der Perspektive der DaF-Benutzer

Funktionsverbgefüge im Fokus

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Research paper thumbnail of Konzeptualisierung und Versprachlichung der Migration im dt. und ital. politischen Diskurs: erste Überlegungen

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Research paper thumbnail of Keine Antwort ist auch eine Antwort: analisi intra- e interlinguistica

The present research aims to describe the German pragmatic phraseme Keine Antwort ist auch eine A... more The present research aims to describe the German pragmatic phraseme Keine Antwort ist auch eine Antwort ('No answer is also an answer') from an intralingual perspective delineating its formal and functional features and, more specifically, its internal and external syntactic behaviour as well as its illocutionary force. In addition to its fixed and lexicalised form, the focus will be placed also on the "partially lexically filled constructions" (Goldberg 2006) [Kein(e) N1 ist auch ein(e) N1] 'No N1 is also a N1', i.e., a more abstract construction which is partially lexicalized and used in specific speech acts. With recourse to corpus data, the noun classes that more frequently occupy the N1 position will be identified. The phraseme Keine Antwort ist auch eine Antwort will be analysed also from an interlingual perspective; the problem of the equivalents in Italian will reflected upon and discussed.

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Research paper thumbnail of Kollokationen – kontrastiv, didaktisch, theoretisch: ein kurzer Überblick

Peter Lang, 2021

Diese Einleitung möchte einen aktuellen Überblick über angewandte und theoretische Aspekte kollok... more Diese Einleitung möchte einen aktuellen Überblick über angewandte und theoretische Aspekte kollokativer Einheiten aus kontrastiver Sicht geben. Dabei rücken folgende Aspekte in den Vordergrund: die Diskussion des Kollokationsbegriffs (auch im Hinblick auf den Fremdsprachenunterricht), die morphosyntaktisch-semantisch relevanten Gebrauchseigenschaften von Kollokationen, sowie ihre Behandlung in der Fremdsprachendidaktik (auch in Lehrwerken sowie anhand möglicher Übungstypologien) und in Wörterbüchern.

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Research paper thumbnail of Überlegungen zur Instrumenalisierung religiöser Entitäten im politischen Diskurs Silvio Berlusconis

Religion und Sprache, 2015

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Research paper thumbnail of Wörterbuchkritik und Wörterbuchbenutzungsforschung

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Research paper thumbnail of Kausalkonstruktionen mit Adjektiv im freien und fixierten Gebrauch

Linguistik Online, 2018

The study describes the semantic and conceptual variation of causal constructions with an adjecti... more The study describes the semantic and conceptual variation of causal constructions with an adjective as they are realized in German, French and Italian. In the framework of Goldberg’s (cf. 1995 and 2006) Construction Grammar, it discusses some defining properties of the analyzed constructions, like the formal and semantic (non-)predictability and their possible phraseological status based on metonymy or metaphor. Several constructions can be identified which convey different meanings, i. e. causality and/or excessiveness. The instantiations of the causal construction are linked to each other by inheritance links which make it possible to describe the variation as a network of constructions. The description of the examples’ variation with their defining properties allows us to advocate a continuum between free and fixed instantiations of the constructions and accordingly between Construction Grammar and Phraseology.

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Research paper thumbnail of Sintassi del verbo tedesco La prospettiva contrastiva

Il volume introduce le studentesse e gli studenti di Lingua e Linguistica tedesca alla riflession... more Il volume introduce le studentesse e gli studenti di Lingua e Linguistica tedesca alla riflessione sui principali aspetti della sintassi del verbo tedesco, attraverso una comparazione analitica con le strutture equivalenti dell'italiano e soprattutto con un ricco apparato di esempi nelle due lingue. La base di partenza del libro è la grammatica valenziale, in particolare nella versione del linguista Ulrich Engel. I principali assunti teorici di questo modello, come i concetti di sintagma e costituente di frase, vengono illustrati concretamente, entrando nel vivo delle realizzazioni del tedesco e anche dell'italiano, proponendo soluzioni spesso trascurate dalla tradizione grammaticale. Viene proposta un'utile classificazione dei complementi (attanti) e dei circostanziali per entrambe le lingue, inclusa un'inedita rappresentazione delle frasi subordinate. La comprensione profonda di una lingua "straniera" non può fare a meno della riflessione contrastiva con la lingua materna di chi la vuole apprendere, per riconoscere appieno analogie e differenze a livello interlinguistico.

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Research paper thumbnail of Korrelate im Deutschen und im Italienischen

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