Inflectional fixation in verbal idioms: a lexicographical proposal for a Spanish–Italian digital repository

This article examines the concept of inflectional fixation (Montoro del Arco 2020a, 2020b) and presents a methodological proposal for the lemmatisation of verbal idioms within a Spanish–Italian/Italian–Spanish digital repository. Despite the significant impact that varying degrees of inflectional variability in verbal idioms can have on the acquisition of foreign language phraseology, current Spanish–Italian lexicographical resources lack a systematic approach to providing clear and concise instructions for language production. To address this gap, this article describes a pilot study conducted as part of the Dizionario Fraseologico Multilingue Digitale (DFMD) research project at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. After introducing the theoretical framework of inflectional fixation, the paper explores the inflectional preferences of the verbal nucleus of the idiom quitar de la boca (lit. ‘to take from the mouth’) and proposes lexicographical entries for the project’s bilingual repository.