Ausdrucksarten – ein neuer Zugang zur Wortschatzvermittlung im DaF-Unterricht?

Word classes are one of the most successful and famous concepts of linguistics. They are an essential part of school grammar as well as of teaching German as a foreign language. Categorizing words in word classes is based on the assumptions that a) 'word' is a relevant and definable linguistic category and b) (single) words are worth classifying. The article concentrates on the second assumption by bringing into play lexicalized multiword expressions, such as hin und her, Wohl und Wehe, im Falle, and weder noch. Because the meanings of these expressions are not predictable (due to the principle of compositionality), it does not make sense to classify the single words which are part of the expression into word classes separately. Therefore, we suggest extending the concept of word classes by including the concept of classes of multiword expression