The Wendish Research Exchange - Piirainen, Elisabeth: “Widespread Idioms in Europe and Beyond”: Lesser-Used Languages and Their Contribution to a “Lexicon of...

Lětopis Abstract 2014 1: Piirainen, Elisabeth: “Widespread Idioms in Europe and Beyond”: Lesser-Used Languages and Their Contribution to a “Lexicon of Common Figurative Units [Article written in English]

Contrary to earlier assumptions, there are far-reaching similarities between idioms of the European languages. This fact was confirmed not least by the results of the project “Widespread idioms in Europe and beyond:” It is not rare to find idiom equivalents with a quite consistent lexical and semantic structure in fifty or more languages. The seventy-four European languages represented in the project can be roughly divided into major languages (well-developed larger literary languages, often also national languages) and varieties that can be subsumed under the technical term lesser used languages. This raises the question as to what extent the lesser used languages share the features of a “common figurative lexicon.” Using four examples we point to differences and try to find explanations.