Idioms

11 Key excerpts on "Idioms"

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  Contrastive Linguistics in Theory and Practice

  A Global Perspective

  • Praful Dhondopant Kulkarni(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Society Publishing

    (Publisher)

  This paper concludes with proposing a number of recommendations to be taken by teachers and translators when tackling such a demanding phenomenon. Key words: Idiomatic Expressions, Culture-specific Idioms , Phrasal Verbs, Proverbs, Contrastive Analysis. IDIOMATICITY IN ENGLISH Idioms have been defined in various ways by English linguists, grammarians, lexicographers and pedagogues. To take just a few of these definitions, an idiom may be referred to as “[a] fixed expression whose meaning is not guessable from the meaning of its parts” (Trask, 2000, p. 67). Fraser (1976) considers an idiom as “a single constituent or series of constituents, whose semantic interpretation is independent of the formatives which compose it” (p. v). In the Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics, Richards et al. (1985) define an idiom as “an expression which functions as a single unit and whose meaning cannot be worked out from its separate parts” (p. 134). Idioms, according to Bolinger (1975), are “groups of words with set meanings that cannot be calculated by adding up the separate meanings of the parts” (as cited in Lattey, 1986, p. 219). Further, Baker (1992) rightly points out that Idioms “are frozen patterns of language which allow little or no variation in form and often carry meanings which cannot be deduced from their individual components” (p. 63). Thus, with Idioms a user cannot normally change the order of the words in them, delete a word from them, replace a word with another, or change their grammatical structure unless he or she is intentionally making a joke or trying a play on words (Baker, 1992). Therefore, Lattey (1986) points out that “as far as the form of Idioms is concerned, we have groups of words, and in terms of meanings, we can say that we are dealing with new, not readily apparent meanings when we confront Idioms” (p. 219).

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  Idioms

  Description, Comprehension, Acquisition, and Pedagogy

  • Dilin Liu(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  For example, Biber et al. (1999, p. 1024), in their comprehensive English grammar book, define Idioms as “expressions with a meaning not entirely derivable from the meaning of their parts.” Similarly, the Cambridge dictionary of American Idioms (2003), for example, defines Idioms as follows: “An idiom is a phrase whose meaning is different from the meanings of each word considered separately. These phrases have a fixed form—they usually cannot be changed” (p. ix). ESL idiom publications often place a special emphasis on the invariance of structure as the most important feature of Idioms. For instance, McMordie (1972), in the book English Idioms, states emphatically, “As a general rule an idiomatic phrase cannot be altered; no other synonymous word can be substituted for any word in the phrase, and the arrangement of the words can rarely be modified” (p. 6). This invariance feature presupposes that Idioms are multiword expressions. Cowie and Mackin (1975) make the point very clear in their Oxford dictionary of current idiomatic English, for they begin their idiom definition by saying, “an idiom is a combination of two or more words which function as a unit of meaning” (p. ix). The reason for excluding single words as Idioms for L2 learners is rather simple and obvious: no matter how difficult it is, a single word is just an individual vocabulary item, and to learn it is basically the same as to grasp any other regular individual word. Learning Idioms, on the other hand, is a different matter as it involves the challenge of not only figuring out their unique meanings but also dealing with their invariance or restricted variance in form. In short, for L2 learners, Idioms are perhaps best defined as multiword expressions that are invariant or variance-restricted in structure and often (not always) non- or semi-literal in meaning

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  Idioms and Ambiguity in Context

  Phrasal and Compositional Readings of Idiomatic Expressions

  • Wiltrud Wagner(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  Part I: Idioms, Ambiguity, and the Role of Context: State of the Art

  1  Idioms: Deriving a Working Definition

  Kick the bucket, draw the strings, be it on your own head – it is easy to give examples of Idioms. But what is an idiom? Giving a definition is far from easy. Linguists have long been interested in this challenge, and there is a rich field of linguistic research on Idioms. Yet there is no agreement on a general definition of the term idiom. This is partly due to the fact that linguists who study Idioms are interested in different aspects and approach the phenomenon from their very individual perspectives: syntacticians are interested in how Idioms may thwart regular syntax; semanticists wonder about the (non-)compositionality of Idioms; pragmaticians study how Idioms interact with their immediate context; and those interested in (first or second) language acquisition are concerned with the challenges learners face when confronted with Idioms. Consequently, there is no standard reference book on Idioms, and the definitions vary in accordance with the perspective (or the combination of perspectives) taken. Furthermore, the term idiom is not limited to scientific research: The term is used in everyday language, which leads researchers to erroneously assume that everyone agrees on what an idiom is. This is often reflected in the fact that no definition is given at all or that the definitions given are more or less implicit.13

  In this chapter, I will therefore consider some of the most influential (implicit and explicit) definitions and try to carefully narrow down the field. The criteria for idiomaticity named most often in linguistic definitions are non-compositionality, conventionalization, figuration, and fixedness (cf. e.g. Nunberg et al. 1994, 492f). I will discuss these four criteria in the following, with my preliminary definition in (9) as a starting point:

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  Studies in Formal Linguistics

  Universal Patterns and Language Specific Parameters

  • Anna Bloch-Rozmej, Anna Bondaruk, Jolanta Szpyra-Kozlowska(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Peter Lang Group

    (Publisher)

  Joanna Kolbusz-Buda 136 Idioms were not always figures of speech� Before becoming opaque, they were motivated expressions� Marret (2005: 495) points out that two main heritages are responsible for the formation of Idioms, i�e� social heritage and cultural heritage� “Even if the speaker perceives the world through his language, the latter is made up of things that exist in the speaker’s social environment” (e�g� to kill two birds with one stone, 1 till the cows come home, 2 to back the wrong horse, 3 a sitting duck, 4 etc�)� By the same token, cultural aspects will be reflected in language (e�g� to turn the other cheek, the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing, in seventh heaven, a wild-goose chase 5 )� The principal feature associated with Idioms is their idiosyncrasy� First and foremost, the lexical constitution of Idioms is, for the most part, unpredictable� The choice of lexemes and their configuration are often highly idiosyncratic, violating the selectional restrictions imposed by words on the environment in which they occur� This, in turn, may result in an anomaly, e�g� to rain cats and dogs, to a have a sweet tooth, to pay through the nose, to get blood out of a stone, no room to swing a cat, etc� The idiom a mountain eats sincerity may serve as an emphatic illustration of such selectional restriction violation where not one but both semantic constraints imposed on the environment by the verb eat are breached� The verb eat typically subcategorises for an animate subject and an object pointing to an edible entity� In this case, however, both these preferences are not fulfilled� Apart from semantic idiosyncrasy, Idioms may at times ‘suffer’ from a syn- tactic ill-formedness (e�g� trip the light fantastic, go bananas, in the know) or fail to construct a syntactic category at all (e�g� by and large)� Ill-formedness may serve as an additional

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  Communication Across Genres and Discourses

  Sixth Brno Conference on Linguistics Studies in English. Brno, 11–12 September 2014. Conference proceedings

  • Martin Adam, Radek Vogel, Martin Adam, Radek Vogel(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Masarykova univerzita

    (Publisher)

  59 DISCOURSAL FUNCTIONS OF IDEATIONAL, INTERPERSONAL AND RELATIONAL IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS Zuzana Hrdličková University of Economics in Bratislava, Slovakia Abstract Research into language learning pays more attention to how rules are learnt, rather than to the goals of such learning. Conventionalized multiword expressions, or Idioms, and the lexis itself have been relatively neglected in language studies. Such neglect can be ascribed to the vocabulary being viewed as the non-generative component. Picking up prefabricated expressions constitutes one of the means of acquiring language. Idiomatic expressions have the potential of appearing anywhere and everywhere, and are marked as occurring in mature discourse. The analysis of reading texts, taken from two English course books series at the advanced level of proficiency, aims to reveal whether and to what extent idiomatic expressions are used in this type of discourse, and what functions they perform. Key words cohesion, coherence, connective, discourse, function, idiomatic expression 1 Introduction From a very young age we learn the importance of communication with others – whether they are as familiar as our parents and relatives or complete strangers whom we chance to encounter in any places. Even if we do not feel the need to be in continual contact with other people, we probably still find it difficult to spend more than a few hours at a time without any communication with others. Briefly, without people there are no languages. The first observation we can make about the use and acquisition of language is that it is a social phenomenon. When two or more people gather together, their lips, tongues and jaws begin to move. Evidence for human beings as thinkers appears in its most obvious form in their production of discourse. Speech is the social cement that binds people together, and because it is social, it rarely emerges in individual isolation.

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  Figurative Language

  Cross-Cultural and Cross-Linguistic Perspectives

  • Dmitrij Dobrovol'skij, Elisabeth Piirainen(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Furthermore, the image com- ponent is often responsible for relevant restrictions in the usage of Idioms (see Dobrovol’skij 2007; Baranov and Dobrovol’skij 2008, 2013). On the other hand, it should be emphasized that it is not possible to predict the actual meaning of an idiom on the basis of its image, i.e. its literal meaning. The same image can often be traced back to different conceptual metaphors; that is to say, the lexical structure of an idiom does not tell us which conceptual metaphor should be taken as a framework within which this idiom must interpreted (see chapter 6 for more details). The result is that – both within the same language and cross-linguistically – semantic differences between Idioms cannot be predicted. To reveal those differ- ences is a purely empirical endeavour, i.e. they can be discovered mainly through research into their range of use. Hence, given an L1-idiom and some L2-Idioms which are considered near-equivalent to the L1-idiom, the only way to find out possible differences between them is to inquire into their functioning in authentic texts. This accounts not only for cross-linguistic non-parallelism in the meaning of Idioms in question (idiom semantics), but also for relevant differences in their combinatorial and transformational properties (idiom syntactics) as well as for the specifics of the situation in which they can be used (idiom pragmatics). For both theoretical and practical issues, it is much more important to discover non- trivial differences between lexical units of L1 and L2 than to point to their simi- larities. A systematic empirical search for relevant cross-linguistic differences in idiom semantics, syntactics and pragmatics needs certain theoretical guidelines, which would ensure its systematic character. To provide these guidelines is a task for the theory of cross-linguistic idiom analysis, which must elaborate parameters and procedures of comparison.

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  Rethinking Order

  Idioms of Stability and Destabilization

  • Nicole Falkenhayner, Andreas Langenohl, Johannes Scheu, Doris Schweitzer, Kacper Szulecki, Nicole Falkenhayner, Andreas Langenohl, Johannes Scheu, Doris Schweitzer, Kacper Szulecki(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • transcript Verlag

    (Publisher)

  Rather, it is the co-constitution of object and practice of analysis which is of interest here. By dint of this focus, an idiomatic perspective also differs from a historiography of ideas or conceptual history. It is not the evolvement and institutionalization of ideas, theories and concepts which is traced, but the moment of their crystallization: the always already entangled entry-point that opens up between what is perceived and ways of perception in the emergence of such ideas and concepts. 3 Finally, the concept of idiom also radicalizes the often heard epistemological critique that the modernist scientific ideal of objectivity is in need of revision. If the ambition of objectivity, as Bourdieu has stressed (Bourdieu 2000), is based on the mirage of an ›analytical distance‹ between analysis and that which it analyzes, an idiomatic approach highlights the ultimate proximity of analysis and its object, a proximity that is the precondition for the co-crystallization of the idiom of analy- sis and its object of study. We thus arrive at the following characterization of idiom as an epistemological device: a. The concept of idiom refers to a foundational moment in social analysis that is owed to its liminality, that is, a formational phase in which a relation be-tween a mode of analysis and an object of study is forged, thus epistemologically constituting both, prior to any analytical ›message‹. That moment equals rather a bodily gesture than a verbal statement, circumscribing a space for analysis through indexing and indeed performing relations between analysis and that what is to be analyzed. The idiomatic moment is thus the point of entry as well as the condition of possibility of analytical modes before any analytical content, and consists of creating a continuity and proximity between object of study and mode of analysis.

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  Traductio

  Essays on Punning and Translation

  • Dirk Delabastita(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  This broad definition of the term helps to account for all phrase-structures that exhibit some degree of idiomaticity, which after all has to be regarded as a cline, not a clear-cut distinction (Makkai 1978:445). Thus, the concept covers typical Idioms such as the structurally 'frozen' and strongly metaphorical phrase to kick the bucket, whose original meaning has faded from linguistic consciousness and is actually a matter for speculation even to professional linguists; but the concept also covers phrases such as feel (all) (the) betterfor (having done) something, which are much more transparent semantically and permit greater structural variation. Proverbs and sayings constitute a subgroup of idiomatic expressions insofar as they meet certain general criteria, such as having the sentence as the upper structural limit (Fernando and Flavell 1981:20) or behaving similarly when undergoing contextually determined transformations. Very often Idioms are not used in their 'normal' dictionary form and in newspaper language especially the occurrence of transformed Idioms has been on the increase over this century: in English and Latvian newspaper and advertising language today, it has been estimated that the frequency of such modified Idioms exceeds half of all cases of idiom use (Veisbergs 1985:43-44). Needless to say, this count excludes modifications which are motivated by purely grammatical rules having to do with the incorporation of the relevant unit into the text (e.g. tense, number, gender, person). In some languages these would create a noticeable formal deviation from the 'dictionary' version of the idiom, but in others, like English, this effect will remain very limited

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  Language Pedagogy

  • Martin Pütz, Susanne Niemeier, René Dirven, Martin Pütz, Susanne Niemeier, René Dirven(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  A cognitive linguistic view of learning Idioms in an FLT context Zoltán Kövecses My general assumption in this paper is that the theory of cognitive linguistics and the many descriptions of various aspects of language that it has provided so far are potentially useful in foreign language teaching (FLT). Both the theory and the specific descriptions of cog-nitive linguistics operate with the notion of motivated meaning (in the form of bodily and/or conceptual motivation). The assumption concerning the potential usefulness of cognitive linguistics is predi-cated on the commonsensical belief that motivation always facilitates learning (as opposed to lack of motivation, which hinders learning -though does not prevent it). The particular linguistic phenomenon that I want to investigate in light of this assumption is that of Idioms. If the cognitive linguistic view of Idioms is indeed helpful in the teaching and learning of Idioms, it should be capable of providing non-trivial answers to at least the following specific questions that bear on the issue: i. What are the most common Idioms? ii. How should we arrange Idioms in an ideal idiom dictionary? iii. What kinds of meaning do Idioms have and how should we represent these different kinds of meaning? iv. How should we teach Idioms in the classroom? v. What role do universality and cross-linguistic variation in metaphor play in idiom-learning? In other words, if the cognitive linguistic view of Idioms has positive pedagogical implications for idiom teaching/learning, then we should be able to determine what specific and positive answers can be given 88 Zoltán Kövecses to each of these questions. In this paper, I will formulate such spe-cific and positive answers, but I do not claim that these are the only answers that could be provided given a cognitive linguistic frame-work. Others within the cognitive linguistic community might want to respond differently to the same issues.

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  How tolerant is universal grammar?

  essays on language learnability and language variation

  • Rosemarie Tracy, Elsa Lattey, Rosemarie Tracy, Elsa Lattey(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  2.4 Errors as a road to linguistic insights The student dialogues, of course, also contain errors that derive from a lack of knowledge about such syntactic peculiarities. But the more interesting errors were such as helped me, the teacher, to discover characteristics of the Idioms and their usage that I had not realized before, despite extensive work with the Idioms in question (my colleague Al Hieke and I had published two workbooks on them and I had written an academic paper on our system of classification as well). Cook (1988:177) points out, citing Chomsky, that one does not learn the grammatical structure of a second language through 'explanation and instruction' beyond the most rudimentary level [because] no one has enough explicit knowledge about [it] [emphasis added]. Some explicit knowledge that I had been lacking before I now obtained from the errors of my students. What I learned was the following: First, that certain specific contexts were inappropriate for certain Idioms. This is an observation about the distribution of an idiom (an observational linguistic statement). The second stage is a recognition of what grammatical or pragmatic convention is being violated by the student usage. (A descriptive linguistic statement, this amounts to a linguistic or psycholinguistic hypothesis.) The third step is to come up with an explanation based on the fact that language is a device of communication and that the users of this device are human beings. (This is what I consider the level of an explanatory statement.) 11 3. Categories relevant for the learning problem I will now discuss some of the data, after which I will return to the theoretical issue of learnability and universal grammar.

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  Acquiring Metaphorical Expressions in a Second Language

  Performance by Chinese Learners of English

  • Chris Mengying Xia(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  Therefore, unless individuals receive suffi cient exposure to such opaque Idioms, they may fail to understand them; both native speakers and learners need suffi cient input, be it through observation (native speakers and learners) or through explicit instruction (L2 learners). Metaphorical expressions, however, are figurative even if they are not always semantically opaque. As discussed in Chapter 2, the figurativeness of metaphorical expressions comes from a departure from the core, literal meaning of the lexical item. When a metaphorical meaning is seen as a meaning of a polysemous lexical item, the meaning of a larger constituent containing a metaphorically-used word can be derived in a compositional manner, and the only difference is the replacement of the literal meaning of that lexical item with the metaphorical meaning. This higher degree of semantic transparency in metaphorical expressions may actually ease Cross-Linguistic Influence 43 the process of acquiring these expressions for both L1 and L2 users. According to Sweetser (1990), a native speaker is capable of deriving the metaphorical meaning(s) of a lexical item when given the contexts and the literal meaning of that lexical item, since the metaphorical meaning(s) are closely connected to the literal meaning. In a similar fashion, in a situation in which: (1) a learner has acquired the literal meaning of a lexical item and (2) that same lexical item is presented metaphorically with appropriate contexts (i.e. a collocation that is biased towards the metaphorical interpretation), it may be possible to infer the correct metaphorical meaning of that lexical item, even if the metaphorical meaning has never been encountered before. Hence, compared with Idioms, it may be easier for learners to acquire and accept metaphorical expressions, and it is possible that some learners can acquire metaphorical expressions even without guidance from instructors.

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