Defence of Anneli Baran's PhD theses on March 15, 2011

PhD student of the Institute of Cultural Research and Fine Arts Anneli Baran will defend her PhD theses "Fraseologismide semantika uurimisvõimalused" (Possibilities for Studying Semantics in Phraseology) in the Assembly Hall of the University Council at 14.15 on March 15th, 2011. Doctoral theses were supervised by Dr. Arvo Krikmann (Estonian Literary Museum); oponent is Dr. Outi Lauhakangas (Finnish Literature Society).

The main aim of the thesis is to position the analysis of Estonian phraseological subject matter within the research trends in phraseology of recent years. In the theoretical introductory part of the thesis, I endeavour an attempt to disclose the most significant concepts in phraseology by way of relying on new approaches. Primarily, I focus on the motivation-related problems concerning the phraseologisms and highlight the main issues of discussion. By doing so, I proceed from phraseologism as a language sign, whereas arbitrariness, the intrinsic nature of the latter, is not the prevailing characteristic. Therefore, conditioned by this, I take a closer look at the iconic nature of the motivation of a figurative unit. Differently from the conventional treatment of motivation, such an approach makes it possible to focus more successfully on the description of a semantic motivation of phraseological units. The existence of two types of motivation – suggested by Dmitrij Dobrovolskij and Elisabeth Piirainen – iconic or metaphoric and symbolic or cultural – does not exclude the units with a smooth transmission, which have also been the main problem in earlier classifications, however, it does introduce the concept of cultural knowledge in the classification of phraseologisms, which has earlier been missing therein.

You are welcome to download the theses at http://hdl.handle.net/10062/16515

Contact: Hille Roots, FLKU co-ordinator, phone: 5307 6615, 737 5223.