Per una definizione di «espressione idiomatica» e una tipologia dell'idiomatico in italiano

Abstract

Traditionally defined as conventionalized frozen expressions whose meaning is non compositional (that is, not knowable from the meanings of the constituent elements), idioms are rather difficult to distinguish from phenomena as, for example, stereotypes, clichés, fixed phrases, bi/trinomials, proverbs, indirect speech acts, speech formulas. The aim of this paper is to examine the three parameters usually referred to in the study of idioms (conventionality, lexical and syntactic frozeness, non-compositionality), in order to explicitate which role each of them can play in the definition of idioms; through the analysis, a typology of Italian idioms is sketched, and finally a definition of «idiomatic expression» is proposed.