FOREIGN LANGUAGE PHRASEOLOGY IN THE US: CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF VERBAL COLLOCATIONS

This article discusses one of the main problems that is associated with various phraseological units, in particular the use of verbal language collocations in the Spanish field. F. J. Hausmann was one of the authors who contributed to colocation theory, arguing that the components of collocations do not have a similar status, given that one of them determines the choice of the other. In this case it should be distinguished between a basis (a word that defines a possible combination) and a collocation. Another contribution to the collocation theory, also from a semantic point of view, are the works of I. A. Melchuk with the development of the concept of “lexical function” for describing restricted words and derivation phenomena. V. V. Vinogradov´s contribution to phraseology is invaluable. However, it was D. O. Dobrovolsky who was the forerunner of the idea of interlinguistic phraseological equivalence, insisting that many language phenomena are defined by culture. In the process of learning collocations difficulties arise, since stable phrases are always difficult and impossible to predict. Usually the components of combinations in one language do not coincide with those in other languages, since there is an influence on the language of the culture in which their own use is manifested, even when it comes to the language variation of the same language, in this case Spanish. This article highlights the importance of language variations in Spanish for the study of language collocations as fixed expressions set in a particular culture. It also presents a comparative study of collocations characteristic of spoken Spanish in the United States and, consequently the degree of complexity of its interpretation not only for students of Spanish as a foreign language, but also for its native speakers.