Il lessico musicale nei modi di dire in italiano e in norvegese

Abstract

This study describes Italian idiomatic expressions with musical lexis compared to Norwegian idioms from the same semantic field. Lexical and semantic criteria are used for the analysis. The corpus created for this purpose contains 157 expressions collected from different lexicographic sources. Several correspondences have been observed between Norwegian and Italian idioms: for example, string instruments are often used for expression describing moods, whereas wind instruments often have a negative connotation. At the same time, Italian idioms contain many key concepts that are often missing in Norwegian culture; for example, terms used to describe the liturgy and prayer (e.g., antifona ‘antiphon’, messa ‘mass’, gloria ‘glory’, vespro ‘vespers’, and litania ‘litany’). Another interesting observation concerns the particular use of some verbs in Italian idioms: for example, suonare can signify ‘to beat’, and cantare come un canarino means ‘to betray a secret’.