Morphemic and Syntactic Phrasemes

Abstract A morphemic phraseme is a phraseme (= a constrained combination of linguistic signs) composed of morphemes that are part of the same wordform. Like a lexemic phraseme, a morphemic phraseme has a segmental signifier. All logically possible types of morphemic phrasemes are presented and illustrated: morphemic idioms, collocations, nominemes and clichés. Formally, these can be phraseologized complex stems, phraseologized complex affixes and phraseologized wordforms. A syntactic phraseme is a phraseme that includes at least two minimal syntactic subtrees and whose signifier is non-segmental (it involves prosody or an operation). All syntactic phrasemes are idioms. A syntactic idiom must be distinguished from 1) phrases described by means of semantically loaded surface-syntactic relations; 2) phrases consisting of a lexical unit taken together with its actants; 3) lexemic phrasemes consisting of “light-weight” words, such as Rus. ˹nu i˺ [X]! lit. ‘Well and [X]’ = ‘What an amazing X!’, and 4) lexemic phrasemes with syntactic pecularities. The notion of fictitious lexeme, necessary for designating some syntactic idioms (those that are expressed only by prosody), is introduced. An illustrative list of 29 Russian syntactic idioms is presented, as well as the lexical entries for several Russian syntactic idioms.