La polisemia en las unidades fraseológicasgénesis y tipología

Abstract

The starting point of our research is the data provided by the phraseological corpus FRASESPAL, which was compiled within the framework of an inter-university research project for the study of Spanish and German languages. This phraseological corpus is focused on the conceptual fields of STAGES OF LIFE/ DEATH, HEALTH / ILLNESS; TALKING / SILENCE in both languages. It provides several examples dealing with polysemy from a textual point of view, which is also the subject of this paper. Basically, we analyze four types of phraseological polysemy, which are not mutually exclusive, but complementary in many cases. These four types are as follows: (1) polysemy due to both the different syntactic patterns of one phraseological unit (PU) and its morphosyntactic use restrictions; (2) polysemy due to classematic variants according to the semic configuration of the actants of the PU; (3) polysemy arising from irony and (4) polysemy due to code switching and to the speaker’s communicative aim. In all these types, the new sememes appear as a result of «deviation» or «semantic innovation» of a prototypical phraseological meaning, according to the guidelines set by the speaker’s intentions in certain contexts of use.