ABSTRACT
The vocabulary of a language comprises lexical items and their meaning and use. By lexical items we understand primarily words but there are also idiomatic phrases such as zwischen Tür und Angel ‘in passing’, jemanden auf die Palme treiben ‘to annoy someone’. The idiomatic phrases (Phraseologismen) comprise several words but unlike normal phrases they always occur in the same order and with no changes to their internal structure. The meaning of the whole phrase cannot be derived from the meaning of the parts (Fleischer 1982; Schippan 1992: 47-50). In this chapter we shall concentrate on words and not deal with idiomatic phrases.
