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

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.