Associative Testing in Phraseology

Abstract

No word exists as an isolated item in our minds; rather, verbal strands connect one word with another. Associations dictionaries identify these strands or connections. The main aim of this paper is to show how to build a phraseological and paremiological corpus, which is anchored in the mental lexicon of a speaker. An extensive associative testing (of 1060 native speakers of Croatian, German and Russian) was carried out. The survey was conducted by means of the associative method (field: wild animals). The testing is intended for practical use, e.g. in teaching German and Russian as a foreign language (in phraseological didactics).