Approaches to a Russian-English Dictionary of Idioms

Approaches to a Russian-English Dictionary of Idioms1 Sophia Lubensky A he goal of this paper is to introduce my forthcoming Russian-English Dictionary ofIdioms and to describe some of the problems I have encountered and approaches I have developed during my twelve years' work on this project. The dictionary is intended to supplement the presently available collection of Russian-English reference sources for idioms and set phrases.2 Initially, the dictionary was conceived of as a translational dictionary of idioms, intended to provide the user with a sufficient number of English equivalents to cover all the Russian contexts available from monolingual and Russian-foreign language (FL) dictionaries, as well as my own extensive card file—citations from about 250 works of Russian literature. However, such factors as the absence ofgood quality Russian-English learner's dictionaries (both general and dictionaries of idioms), the inadequate presentation of idioms in Russian monolingual dictionaries,3 and, regrettably, a considerable number of errors in published translations have convinced me of the necessity to include definitions, grammatical information, and usage notes (when needed), in this dictionary. Further on in this paper a more detailed justification for doing so is provided. While the great majority of entries in the dictionary are idioms per se, or "traditional" idioms, the dictionary is not limited to this group. In an attempt to accommodate the user in the best way possible , I have placed pragmatic considerations above linguistic custom and have included, in addition to traditional idioms, several other groups of set expressions, some of which are excluded by convention from Russian monolingual and bilingual dictionaries of idioms. They are: 1) metaphors expressing various emotions, feelings, modes of behavior, etc. 2) lexical functional expressions4 such as volcij appétit5 'a voracious appetite'.6 This group includes frozen similes 32Sophia Lubensky such as (krasnyj) kak rak '(red) as a beet', (glup) kak probka '(as) dumb as they come*. 3) idiomatic interjections used to express various emotions and reactions, e.g., nu i nu! 'well I neverl'/'well I'll be (damned)!', vot tebe i raz! 'how do you like that!7'well, what do you know!' 4) formula phrases, i.e., fixed conversational phrases used in various contexts, e.g., vsego xoroSego 'all the best', ne stoit 'don't mention it*. 5) idiomatic prepositions: po linii (¿ego) 'in the area of; conjunctions: pered tern kak 'before'; and particles: togo i gljadi '(one may do sth. ) any minute now'.7 6) commonly used sayings and proverbs that occur in Russian literary works (in full or abbreviated form) and/or in colloquial speech: luiíe sínica ? rukax, ¿em iuravl' ? nebe 'a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush', and its two offshoot idioms sinica ? rukax and iuravl' ? nebe. 7) "winged words" or Krylatye slova, i.e., commonly used quotations from works of Russian literature and poetry, e.g., byli kogda-to i my rysakami 'we too had our hour of glory', from A. N. Apuxtin's poem A Team of Bays (Paragnedyx, 1895). An idiom is interpreted as a non-free combination of two or more words which acts as a semantic whole (in the case of pure idioms , their meaning cannot be deduced from the dictionary meanings of their components), is reproduced in speech as a ready-made unit, and functions as a part of speech or an independent sentence. The following characteristic properties of idioms, which may occur in different combinations, were also taken into consideration and subsequently reflected in the grammatical descriptions: 1. Many idioms have a defective paradigm. The defectiveness of a paradigm may involve case, e.g., samaja malost' 'a tiny bit,' in one of its senses used only in the accusative case: samuju malost'; number, e.g., vysokie materii 'lofty topics ' and sil'nye mira segó 'the mighty of this world' used only in the plural; durnoj glaz 'the evil eye' and stanovoj xrebet 'backbone' used only in the singular; person , e.g., cest' imeju (the greeting) 'what an honor' used only in the first person (singular); nedorogo voz'met 'one won't think twice (about doing sth.)' used in the second and third person only; the impersonal ne melaet 'it's...