Phraseological Competence and Stability of Structure in Phraseological Units

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the correlation between linguistic communicative competence of Croatian native speakers and the comprehension of phraseological units (PUs) with established form and fixed structure. The fixed structure is considered to be a relative feature in studies on PUs, mainly because of variations in different characters. However, it is obvious that modifications (or deviations from the form) in which PUs are most often found in writing are still subject to additional considerations and examinations. In order to examine this issue, a research was carried out in the seventh grade of elementary school and the second grade of high school. The purpose of the research materials was to examine to what extent Croatian native speakers consider PUs as linguistic units with a fixed structure, i.e. whether they find acceptable even the PUs with internal substitution of components.

El presente trabajo indaga sobre el desarrollo de la competencia fraseológica en adolescentes de trece y dieciséis años, si las modificaciones estructurales de unidades fraseológicas (UF) en croata como su lengua materna, las consideran aceptables. Los resultados muestran que los participantes consideran las modificaciones estructurales de las UF aceptables hasta cierto punto, sobre todo las modificaciones que implican la sustitución de componentes normalmente fijos en la unidad fraseológica, y que la aceptabilidad de las estructuras fraseológicas modificadas disminuye con el desarrollo de la competencia fraseológica.