Crossing Linguistic Boundaries

Systemic, Synchronic and Diachronic Variation in English

Paloma Núñez-Pertejo, María José López-Couso, Belén Méndez-Naya, Javier Pérez-Guerra

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781350267459
• eBook ISBN: 9781350053878
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Lingüística histórica y comparativa

Breaking away from previously rigid descriptions of the linguistic system of the English language, Crossing Linguistic Boundaries explores fascinating case studies which refuse to fall neatly within the traditional definitions of linguistic domains and boundaries. Bringing together leading international scholars in English linguistics, this volume focusses on these controversies in relation to seeking to overcome the temporal and geographical limits of the English language. Approaching tensions in the areas of English phonology and phonetics, pragmatics, semantics, morphology and syntax, chapters discuss not only British and American English but also a wide variety of geographical variants. Containing synchronic and diachronic studies covering different periods in the history of English, Crossing Linguistic Boundaries will appeal to anyone interested in linguistic variation in English.

Part One

Tensioning the System

1

Prosodic Templates in English Idioms and Fixed Expressions

Raymond Hickey

University of Duisburg-Essen

1. Introduction¹

The status of idioms within the structure of a language has been the subject of many investigations and analyses by syntacticians and semanticists over the past few decades (Makkai 1972; Cacciari and Glucksberg 1991; Cacciari and Tabossi 1993; Everaert et al. 1995). Specifically, the position of idioms within a broadly generative grammatical framework has been the subject of many studies (Fraser 1970; Katz 1973; Newmeyer 1974; Machonis 1985; O’Grady 1998; McGinnis 2002). Other works have appeared which are not bound to a single theory but nonetheless examine idioms from a structural perspective (Nunberg, Sag and Wasow 1994; Schenk 1995; Titone and Conine 1999; Horn 2003; Mateu and Espinal 2007). There is also a practical aspect to idioms and many works concerned with foreign language teaching or of a general lexicographical nature deal with this area of language (Leaney 2005; Ayto 2009). Practically no studies have involved themselves with the prosodic structure of idioms: Ashby (2006), and to a lesser extent, Shiobara (2010), are exceptions here. It is the aim of the current chapter to view idioms from the perspective of their prosody, in particular the patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables which occur in idioms. This chapter is exploratory in nature, but hopefully arrives at valid generalizations concerning idioms.

Definitions of idioms appeal to the fixed nature of the words they contain. For instance, The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary sees an idiom (in the sense used in this chapter) as a ‘phrase etc. which is understood by speakers of a particular language despite its meaning’s not being predictable from that of the separate words’. The essential part of this definition is that the meaning of an idiom cannot be predicted from that of the individual words it contains. This has led to idioms being structurally invariant. However, one is dealing with gradience rather binarity here and the border between idioms and collocations, the frequent co-occurrence of lexical items, e.g., a fair trial, inclement weather, is often difficult to draw with certainty.

The relatively fixed nature of idioms applies on the semantic level but also in the formal expression of idioms, which has a direct consequence for the prosod...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part 1 Tensioning the System
• 1 Prosodic Templates in English Idioms and Fixed Expressions
• 2 Word-search as Word-formation? The Case of uh and um
• 3 Demonstratives Licensed by Cultural Co-presence
• 4 The Fall and Rise of English any
• 5 Revisiting ‘it-extraposition‘: The Historical Development of Constructions with Matrices (it)/(there) be + Noun Phrase followed by a Complement Clause
• 6 On Grammatical Change and Discourse Environments
• 7 Grammaticalizing Adverbs of English: The Case of still
• Part 2 Synchronic and Diachronic Variation
• 8 How British is Gibraltar English?
• 9 Singular they in Asian Englishes: A Case of Linguistic Democratization?
• 10 It is important that Mandatives (should) be studied across Different World Englishes and from a Construction Grammar Perspective
• 11 The Stative Progressive in Singapore English: A Panchronic Perspective
• Index
• Copyright