Call for papers

International Symposium

Interdisciplinary approaches

to phraseological units (PU)

in world languages

Linguistics - NLP & AI - Translation - Literature

March 12-14, 2025

Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales

65 rue des Grands Moulins, 75013 Paris

Every natural language possesses a specific set of polylexical units that are unique to it. These units consist of elements arranged in a particular order, inseparable if they are to convey meaning. Linguists refer to these as “phraseological units” (PUs) (Gonzalez-Rey 2002).

A PU (also known as phraseologism or phraseme) is a “[…] polylexical sequence consisting of two or more categorically linked graphic [lexis], contiguous or not” (Bolly 2011: 28). The concept of a phraseological unit can be likened to that of the English phrase (syntagm, locution) or phraseology, with the Chinese term 熟语学 shúyǔxué, and the Vietnamese term ngữ đoạn, referring to “the fixed, idiomatic expressions and locutions within a language” (Sułkowska 2013: 30). These include “partial formulae” (Mejri 2008b) or “appropriate associations” (ibid.), such as collocations (e.g., heavy rain, une peur bleue), or “ready-made” or “formulaic language” (Wray 2010), like proverbs (e.g., Don't bite the hand that feeds you. Tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse.谋事在人, 成事在天) and idiomatic expressions (e.g. on the tip of my tongue, un coup de main, 狐假虎威).

However, while on a statistical level the PUs are mainly polylexical, a certain number are monolexical, being brachylogical forms of polylexical expressions. For instance, “Pardon, Bonjour, Merci, or C'est clair” [Sorry, Hello, Thank you or It's clear], which can be seen as abbreviated versions of “Je vous demande pardon, Je vous dis bonjour” [I ask you for forgiveness, I say hello to you] (cf. Blanco-Escoda & Mejri, 2018), “Je vous/te remercie, or C'est clair comme l'eau de roche” [thank you, or It's crystal clear].

Phraseology is the linguistic dimension relating to the study of PUs. The impact of phraseology is deeply ingrained in the diversity of the world's languages. Each language possesses its own treasure trove of idioms and collocations, reflecting cultural values, historical experiences and unique linguistic idiosyncrasies. Phraseology has earned a place of choice in linguistic research, and there is today “unanimous recognition of its interdisciplinary position” (Legallois & Tutin 2013) and its status as a distinct linguistic discipline (Telija at the Bucharest Congress 1970).



We invite professors-researchers, researchers, and PhD students to join us in this interdisciplinary event in order to further reflection on phraseology.


The symposium will explore six main themes.

Theme 1:  PUs and theoretical & applied linguistics

Phraseology now encompasses a wide range of subjects, ranging from collocations to idiomatic expressions. The first to take an interest was Charles Bally (1951), considered the father of phraseology. According to Cowie (1998), “figurative idioms” contain a perceptible metaphor or metonymy. The approaches proposed now extend beyond the traditional disciplines of lexicology, syntax, and semantics, and broadly address discourse linguistics, psycholinguistics, and computational linguistics (Legallois & Tutin 2013).  From theory to practice, from spoken to written language, numerous new branches have emerged in the field of phraseology, including phraséodidactics (Gonzalez-Rey 2022, Sułkowska 2013, Cavalla & Legallois 2020), phraseotraductology (Sułkowska 2016, 2022), (meta)phraseography (Mel’čuk & Polguère 2007, Anscombre & Mejri 2011, Murano 2011, Gonzalez-Rey 2017, Mejri & Zhu 2020, Chen, Do-Hurinville & Dao 2023), contrastive phraseology (Sułkowska 2016), expressions of emotion and psycho-collocations (Dao & Do-Hurinville, 2017), cultural phenomena (Dobrovol'skij 1998, Piirainen 2008, Szerszunowicz 2010, Dobrovol'skij & Piirainen 2021) on PUs, or phraseoculture (Chen 2022), and "extended phraseology" (Legallois & Tutin, 2013).

In the current landscape where phraseology has evolved into an autonomous discipline within linguistics, it is pertinent to discuss the importance of the elements of theoretical phraseology. What are the new PU-related lines of thought (collocations, psycho-collocations, paremias, expressions, idiomatics, phrasemes, etc.)? What are the links between PUs and DMs (discourse markers) or pragmatemes (Do-Hurinville, Dao & Rialland 2020), for example?

Theme 2: PUs and Lexicography

(Meta)phraseography (Murano, 2011; Chen, 2023) is a branch of phraseology whose object of study is the development of PUs collections, glossaries and dictionaries. These represent essential resources for both learners and translators. However, PUs are not always systematically identified in dictionaries, and they are not always accompanied by an appropriate translation in bilingual dictionaries. In addition, the cultural dimension, also known as phraseoculture, is not often well taken into account. It is therefore essential to explore new phraseographic strategies in order to present the language-culture to readers in a more relevant way.

We are therefore interested in new conceptions of the development of monolingual, bilingual or multilingual dictionaries. How can we improve the integration of PUs into these types of dictionaries, taking into account their cultural value? What strategies have been adopted to facilitate the identification and understanding of PUs for learners so that they can achieve a more in-depth mastery of the language-culture?

Theme 3: PUs and Didactics

Phrasedidactics (González-Rey, 2007) focuses on “the teaching-learning of any element considered as PUs, namely idiomatic expressions, collocations and paremias in the context of the acquisition of modern languages » (Sułkowska, 2016: 40). According to Galisson (1994: 25), phraseodidactics is an attempt "to trap culture in language, most often associating with it the intercultural approach". González Rey (2010) contend that the natural and spontaneous employment of fixed expressions in discourse serves as incontrovertible evidence of learners' proficient mastery of a foreign language.

What methods are available for furthering language-culture acquisition in foreign language learning (Cavalla, 2014)? How are PUs operated on and treated in foreign-language textbooks, and also in foreign-language conversation guides? This leads to a dialogue with the spirit of conversation in the perspective of a “new brachylogy” proposed by M’henni (2015, 2021). What are the current obstacles to the effective integration of PUs into foreign language teaching materials, and how can they be overcome? How can we design an intercultural approach in the teaching of PUs, in order to immerse learners in the culture associated with these fixed expressions? What pedagogical strategies should be implemented to encourage the natural use of PUs in the discourse of foreign language learners, while taking into account current research and the recommendations of phraseodidacticians?


Theme 4: PUs and Traductology

Phraseotraductology (Sułkowska 2018) is a branch of applied phraseology whose object of study is the translation of phraseology (or phraseotranslation). The translation of languages requires specific treatment of fixed structures. The number and frequency of PUs in every natural language is significant, which is why phraseotranslation as a specialized discipline at the level of all translation seems to be necessary and motivated. However, idiomatic expressions are most often untranslatable literally (e.g. It’s raining cats and dogs – ? Il tombe des chats et des chiens), because they are based in particular on their own cultural data.  Translators must not only decode the literal meaning but also capture the cultural and stylistic nuances of PUs to deliver accurate and culturally appropriate translations.

From a translation perspective, on the basis of similarities and differences at lexical, grammatical, semantic and stylistic aspects, linguists distinguish several cases: perfect or complete equivalents (Кunin calls them “monoequivalents”, Sułkowska calls them “homologues” ), selective equivalents (termed “variable correspondences” by Gak), partial equivalents or partial correspondence (Mejri 2008a), calques or non-equivalents.  

What are the obstacles encountered by the literary translator? Why are the equivalences proposed in dictionaries often not considered relevant in literary translation? What are the strategies adopted by the literary translator in the translation of PUs? How can the imagery depicted in English expressions like 'It's raining cats and dogs' be preserved in foreign language renditions?

In specialized translation, we cannot deal with the phraseological question without taking into consideration the terminology of the field concerned. So what is the place given to the terminology in the treatment of PUs? Could we argue for continuity between literary phraseotranslation and specialized phraseotranslation? Or should we consider them as two branches of phraseotranslation, which conditions the translator's work?


Theme 5: PUs and NLP (Natural Language Processing) & AI (Artificial Intelligence)

In the digital age and amidst contemporary artificial intelligence (AI), the field of computational phraseology encounters significant challenges, highlighting the rise of a particular discipline: computational phraseology. Positioned at the crossroads of computer science and PU analysis, it strives to understand the subtleties of the semantics and the structure of expressions in a digital context. We invite all experts to delve into the challenges and opportunities inherent in the advancement of this burgeoning discipline.

As a linguistic discipline in its own right, phraseology has found its place in contemporary linguistic research, exploring the frontiers of theoretical and applied linguistics. The increasing utilization of computational linguistics, particularly in NLP, presents promising vistas for the analysis and comprehension of PUs. Progress in NLP allows for a more in-depth exploration of collocations, idiomatic expressions and other phraseological constructions, paving the way for a better understanding of their functioning and translation. In addition, corpus projects on phraseology, such as Phraseotext and PhraseoRom, exploit new and digital technologies to enrich our understanding of phraseological phenomena in different languages and contexts.

With this in mind, the integration of AI into NLP represents a major step forward. It improves the accuracy and efficiency of automatic PU extraction. For instance, pre-trained language models such as BERT and GPT have demonstrated exceptional performance in detecting and categorizing phrasemes. These AI-based approaches also offer the possibility of discovering new semantic and syntactic relationships between words within expressions, thus contributing to a better understanding of phraseological nuances.

What are the most effective new tools, methods and techniques for automatically extracting “phrasemes” (Mel'čuk 2011) from a text? How can AI be used to improve the identification and classification of PUs in a linguistic corpus? What particular challenges does AI encounter when understanding and generating texts containing PUs?

We propose to explore, among other things, the implications of NLP in the study of PUs, as well as the new tools and methodologies developed in this field. By addressing these issues, we hope to contribute to the advancement of interdisciplinary research in phraseology and to a deeper understanding of the complex linguistic phenomena that underlie our languages.


Theme 6: PUs and Literature

Literature is undoubtedly an indispensable and limitless phraseological resource. In the contemporary digital humanities landscape, as highlighted by Novakova (2021), “traditional approaches to literary genres rely on innovative methods, based on the tools of corpus linguistics (cf. Beauvisage 2001, Rastier 2011) and NLP, make it possible to extract large masses of language data for stylistic analysis. Thus, recently, a large-scale exploration of lexico-syntactic constructions (LSC), specific to the contemporary novel, was carried out as part of the PhraseoRom project (https://phraseorom.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr)”. Novakova showed the relevance of the notion of “phraseological motif” for the distinction of the following six literary subgenres: the “general literature subgenre”, the “sentimental novel subgenre”, the “detective novel subgenre”, the “historical subgenre,” the “fiction subgenre,” and the “fantasy subgenre.”

According to Denoyelle & Sorba (2020: 3), the notion of a “motif” was introduced a few years ago to designate a PU that structures the texture of discourse. Initially conceptualized as “a framework encompassing a set of parameters to be defined and capable of characterizing the various texts within a corpus” (Longrée, Luong & Mellet 2008: 735), the motif has evolved into “a comprehensive PU” enabling the highlighting of textual specificities, or “a collocational framework" aimed at accommodating a set of fixed and variable elements, likely to accompany the textual structure, and simultaneously, to characterize texts of diverse genres” (Longrée & Mellet 2013).

Siepmann (2016: 24/34) notes that collocations are considered literary if their frequency in corpora of novels is at least three times higher than in newspapers, scientific texts and spontaneous speech. Based on collected data, we can affirm that certain types of lexemes and collocational configurations are specific to literary composition.This literary phraseology has two primary facets: (i) “universal” configurations, easily transposable from one language to another (eg. il en était là de ses réflexions quand – his thoughts were interrupted as ; le soleil déclinant – the evening sun / the setting sun), and (ii) “language-specific” configurations.

Thus, another objective of this symposium is to establish a distribution of the use of PUs in different literary genres and to determine their potential stylistic functions. Can the use of PUs characterize the style of an author, or of a literary genre? Through their connotative power, how do PUs structure the narrative progression and the attitude of the narrator?

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