Resumen Phraseological units, traditionally described by means of different properties, such as idiomaticity, fixedness and non-compositionality, are also subject to variation. Far from coming into conflict with the key phraseological characteristic (fixedness), variation reinforces its identity through various categories consistent across different phraseological types, different registers and different languages. This paper sets out to find a definition of phraseological variation and to establish a general framework of this phenomenon. We distinguish two main categories: variants and modifications and ¡Ilústrate them with Germán, English and Spanish examples.
IntroducciónLas primeras investigaciones lingüísticas que advierten la existencia de la fraseología 1 destacan sobre todo las características que la distinguen y separan del resto de combinaciones de palabras potencialmente existentes en el sistema de la lengua, a saber, las combinaciones libres. Fruto de la comparación de ambos tipos de expresiones, fraseológicas y libres, surgen los rasgos de la fijación y la idiomaticidad que sirven para describir la naturaleza de las primeras. Tradicionalmente, pues, la fraseología se ha considerado como la parcela eminentemente estable de las lenguas, hasta el punto de merecer adjetivos como fosilizado, congelado, prefabricado, etc. La importancia del rasgo de la fijación es tan elevada e inherente a la identidad de las UFs (unidades fraseológicas) que la propia terminología hace uso 1Entendemos por fraseología el conjunto de combinaciones estables formadas al menos por dos palabras gráficas y cuyo límite superior se sitúa en el nivel de la oración compuesta, las cuales se caracterizan por su alta frecuencia de (co)-aparición y su institucionalización en la lengua, así como los diversos grados de idiomaticidad y variación que éstas pueden presentar (Corpas Pastor, 1996: 269;Corpas Pastor, 1998a). El término fraseología es también la denominación que recibe la disciplina que estudia tales combinaciones.
Phraseological modification (PM) is a recurrent stylistic resource in specific types of texts, mainly journalistic
texts, advertisements and literature. Since literary works are complete texts, the analysis of PM in these texts can go beyond the
mere identification of the changes that the units have undergone, facilitating, in turn, the exploration of their stylistic
effects. This paper explores the use of PM in a fable written by Luis Sepúlveda, The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who
Taught Her to Fly. The aim is to determine the extra value that modifications bring to the text by finding out not
only the number and types of units modified but also the effects achieved. The results show that the author’s choice of
phraseological units (PUs) and modification procedures is not arbitrary. In this text, PM directly relates to distinctive features
of fables, namely the humanisation of animals and humour, providing new semantic and symbolic dimensions absent in other fables
which lack this pervasive use of modifications. Creative PU variation takes animal humanisation a step further by
anthropomorphising animals and distancing them from humans at the same time. This, in turn, sustains the moral lessons of the
story.
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