A Corpus-Based Approach to Lexicography: A New English-Russian Phraseological Dictionary

This paper addresses the principles of constructing the first English-Russian phraseological dictionary based on corpus data. The purpose of the present research is to introduce a methodology for organizing the selected items in a corpus-searchable phraseme list of a dictionary, to discuss linguistic issues presenting difficulties for bilingual lexicography and to analyze semantic asymmetry between English and Russian phrasemes. To achieve this goal, the following methodology has been introduced: analyzing and retrieving idioms from monolingual and bilingual idiomatic dictionaries, determining the degree of frequency of the selected idioms, considering variants of idioms and arranging them in a systematic way, and developing an idiom list. A phraseme is used in this article as a general term for a multi-word phrase with at least one fixed component. The article demonstrates the advantages of compiling a phraseological bilingual dictionary based on an analysis of corpus data and using authentic examples in the lexicographic description of phrasemes. Using corpora provides a new perspective on the contextual behavior of phrasemes and restrictions of their usage. The paper discusses the impact of using parallel English and Russian corpora for analysis of non-trivial features of English phrasemes, in comparison with their Russian equivalents, in the process of constructing an English-Russian phraseological dictionary. After an introduction, the article presents the methodology and data applied in the research and then discusses the results of the study; the author provides evidence of the advantages of using corpora in bilingual lexicography.