Chapter 3. Teaching phraseology in the 19th century

Abstract

Phraseology has long been associated with lexicography (Knappe, 2004), especially with bilingual dictionaries, which have traditionally had a didactic aspect (Moon, 2000). In the 19th century, it was considered a fundamental area of concern in teaching and learning a foreign language and theRoyal phraseological English–French, French–English dictionary(Tarver, Vol. 1, 1845; Vol. 2, 1849) addressed it by recording “an extensive phraseology to illustrate the proper manner of using the words” (1845, p. 7), with a novel lexicological, lexicographical and pedagogical approach. This chapter shows that Tarver’s dictionary innovates in relation to the few previous, comparable lexicographical works, and that it foreshadows later, especially 20th-century, approaches to the inclusion and treatment for didactic purposes of word combinations in English general-purpose and specialized learner dictionaries.