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An idiom is a phrase or expression that typically presents a figurative, non-literal meaning attached to the phrase; but some phrases become figurative idioms while retaining the literal meaning of the phrase. Categorized as
formulaic language Formulaic language (previously known as automatic speech or embolalia) is a linguistic term for verbal expressions that are fixed in form, often non-literal in meaning with attitudinal nuances, and closely related to communicative-pragmatic contex ...
, an idiom's figurative meaning is different from the literal meaning. Idioms occur frequently in all languages; in
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
alone there are an estimated twenty-five million idiomatic expressions.


Derivations

Many idiomatic expressions were meant literally in their original use, but sometimes the attribution of the literal meaning changed and the phrase itself grew away from its original roots—typically leading to a
folk etymology Folk etymology (also known as popular etymology, analogical reformation, reanalysis, morphological reanalysis or etymological reinterpretation) is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more famili ...
. For instance, the phrase "spill the beans" (meaning to reveal a secret) is first attested in 1919, but has been said to originate from an ancient method of voting by depositing beans in jars, which could be spilled, prematurely revealing the results. Other idioms are deliberately figurative. For example, "
break a leg "Break a leg" is a typical English idiom used in the context of theatre or other performing arts to wish a performer "good luck". An ironic or non-literal saying of uncertain origin (a dead metaphor), "break a leg" is commonly said to actors and ...
" is an ironic expression to wish a person good luck just prior to their giving a performance or presentation. It may have arisen from the superstition that one ought not utter the words "good luck" to an actor because it is believed that doing so will cause the opposite result.


Compositionality

In
linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Ling ...
, idioms are usually presumed to be
figures of speech A figure of speech or rhetorical figure is a word or phrase that intentionally deviates from ordinary language use in order to produce a rhetorical effect. Figures of speech are traditionally classified into '' schemes,'' which vary the ordinary ...
contradicting the
principle of compositionality In semantics, mathematical logic and related disciplines, the principle of compositionality is the principle that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its constituent expressions and the rules used to combine them ...
. That compositionality is the key notion for the analysis of idioms is emphasized in most accounts of idioms. This principle states that the meaning of a whole should be constructed from the meanings of the parts that make up the whole. In other words, one should be in a position to understand the whole if one understands the meanings of each of the parts that make up the whole. The following example is widely employed to illustrate the point: Understood compositionally, Fred has literally kicked an actual, physical bucket. The much more likely idiomatic reading, however, is non-compositional: Fred is understood to have died. Arriving at the idiomatic reading from the literal reading is unlikely for most speakers. What this means is that the idiomatic reading is, rather, stored as a single
lexical item In lexicography, a lexical item is a single word, a part of a word, or a chain of words ( catena) that forms the basic elements of a language's lexicon (≈ vocabulary). Examples are ''cat'', ''traffic light'', ''take care of'', ''by the way' ...
that is now largely independent of the literal reading. In
phraseology In linguistics, phraseology is the study of set or fixed expressions, such as idioms, phrasal verbs, and other types of multi-word lexical units (often collectively referred to as ''phrasemes''), in which the component parts of the expression t ...
, idioms are defined as a sub-type of
phraseme A phraseme, also called a set phrase, idiomatic phrase, multi-word expression (in computational linguistics), or idiom, is a multi-word or multi-morphemic utterance whose components include at least one that is selectionally constrained or restr ...
, the meaning of which is not the regular sum of the meanings of its component parts. John Saeed defines an idiom as collocated words that became affixed to each other until metamorphosing into a fossilised term. This collocation of words redefines each component word in the
word-group In syntax and grammar, a phrase is a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adjective phrase "very happy". Phrases can consi ...
and becomes an ''idiomatic expression''. Idioms usually do not translate well; in some cases, when an idiom is translated directly word-for-word into another language, either its meaning is changed or it is meaningless. When two or three words are conventionally used together in a particular sequence, they form an
irreversible binomial In linguistics and stylistics, an irreversible binomial, frozen binomial, binomial freeze, binomial expression, binomial pair, or nonreversible word pair is a pair or group of words used together in fixed order as an idiomatic expression or collo ...
. For example, a person may be left "high and dry", but never "dry and high". Not all irreversible binomials are idioms, however: "chips and dip" is irreversible, but its meaning is straightforwardly derived from its components.


Mobility

Idioms possess varying degrees of mobility. Whereas some idioms are used only in a routine form, others can undergo syntactic modifications such as passivization, raising constructions, and
clefting A cleft sentence is a complex sentence (one having a main clause and a dependent clause) that has a meaning that could be expressed by a simple sentence. Clefts typically put a particular constituent into focus. In spoken language, this focusing i ...
, demonstrating separable constituencies within the idiom. ''Mobile idioms'', allowing such movement, maintain their idiomatic meaning where ''fixed idioms'' do not: ;Mobile: ''I spilled the beans on our project.'' → ''The beans were spilled on our project.'' ;Fixed: ''The old man kicked the bucket.'' → ''The bucket was kicked'' (by the old man). Many fixed idioms lack ''semantic composition'', meaning that the idiom contains the semantic role of a verb, but not of any object. This is true of ''kick the bucket'', which means ''die''. By contrast, the semantically composite idiom ''spill the beans'', meaning ''reveal a secret'', contains both a semantic verb and object, ''reveal'' and ''secret''. Semantically composite idioms have a syntactic similarity between their surface and semantic forms. The types of movement allowed for certain idioms also relate to the degree to which the literal reading of the idiom has a connection to its idiomatic meaning. This is referred to as ''motivation'' or ''transparency''. While most idioms that do not display semantic composition generally do not allow non-adjectival modification, those that are also motivated allow lexical substitution. For example, ''oil the wheels'' and ''grease the wheels'' allow variation for nouns that elicit a similar literal meaning. These types of changes can occur only when speakers can easily recognize a connection between what the idiom is meant to express and its literal meaning, thus an idiom like ''kick the bucket'' cannot occur as ''kick the pot''. From the perspective of
dependency grammar Dependency grammar (DG) is a class of modern grammatical theories that are all based on the dependency relation (as opposed to the ''constituency relation'' of phrase structure) and that can be traced back primarily to the work of Lucien Tesniè ...
, idioms are represented as a catena which cannot be interrupted by non-idiomatic content. Although syntactic modifications introduce disruptions to the idiomatic structure, this continuity is only required for idioms as lexical entries. Certain idioms, allowing unrestricted syntactic modification, can be said to be metaphors. Expressions such as ''jump on the bandwagon'', ''pull strings'', and ''draw the line'' all represent their meaning independently in their verbs and objects, making them compositional. In the idiom ''jump on the bandwagon'', ''jump on'' involves joining something and a 'bandwagon' can refer to a collective cause, regardless of context.


Translation

A word-by-word translation of an opaque idiom will most likely not convey the same meaning in other languages. The English idiom ''kick the bucket'' has a variety of equivalents in other languages, such as ''kopnąć w kalendarz'' ("kick the calendar") in Polish, ''casser sa pipe'' ("to break his pipe") in French and ''tirare le cuoia'' ("pulling the leathers") in Italian. Some idioms are transparent. Much of their meaning gets through if they are taken (or translated) literally. For example, ''lay one's cards on the table'' meaning to reveal previously unknown intentions or to reveal a secret. Transparency is a matter of degree; ''spill the beans'' (to let secret information become known) and ''leave no stone unturned'' (to do everything possible in order to achieve or find something) are not entirely literally interpretable but involve only a slight metaphorical broadening. Another category of idioms is a word having several meanings, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes discerned from the context of its usage. This is seen in the (mostly uninflected) English language in
polysemes Polysemy ( or ; ) is the capacity for a sign (e.g. a symbol, a morpheme, a word, or a phrase) to have multiple related meanings. For example, a word can have several word senses. Polysemy is distinct from ''monosemy'', where a word has a si ...
, the common use of the same word for an activity, for those engaged in it, for the product used, for the place or time of an activity, and sometimes for a
verb A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descrip ...
. Idioms tend to confuse those unfamiliar with them; students of a new language must learn its idiomatic expressions as vocabulary. Many
natural language In neuropsychology, linguistics, and philosophy of language, a natural language or ordinary language is any language that has evolved naturally in humans through use and repetition without conscious planning or premeditation. Natural languages ...
words have ''idiomatic origins'' but are assimilated and so lose their figurative senses. For example, in Portuguese, the expression ''saber de coração'' 'to know by heart', with the same meaning as in English, was shortened to 'saber de cor', and, later, to the verb ''decorar'', meaning ''memorize''. In 2015, TED collected 40 examples of bizarre idioms that cannot be translated literally. They include the Swedish saying "to slide in on a shrimp sandwich", which refers those who did not have to work to get where they are. Conversely, idioms may be shared between multiple languages. For example, the Arabic phrase في نفس المركب (''fi nafs al-markab'') is translated as "in the same boat," and it carries the same figurative meaning as the equivalent idiom in English. According to the German linguist Elizabeth Piirainen, the idiom "to get on one's nerves" has the same figurative meaning in 57 European languages. She also says that the phrase "to shed crocodile tears," meaning to express insincere sorrow, is similarly widespread in European languages but is also used in Arabic, Swahili, Persian, Chinese, Mongolian, and several others. The origin of cross-language idioms is uncertain. One theory is that cross-language idioms are a
language contact Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for th ...
phenomenon, resulting from a word-for-word translation called a
calque In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language ...
. Piirainen says that may happen as a result of
lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
usage in which speakers incorporate expressions from their own native tongue, which exposes them to speakers of other languages. Other theories suggest they come from a shared ancestor language or that humans are naturally predisposed to develop certain metaphors.


Dealing with non-compositionality

The non-compositionality of meaning of idioms challenges theories of syntax. The fixed words of many idioms do not qualify as constituents in any sense. For example: The fixed words of this idiom (in bold) do not form a constituent in any theory's analysis of syntactic structure because the object of the preposition (here ''this situation'') is not part of the idiom (but rather it is an
argument An argument is a statement or group of statements called premises intended to determine the degree of truth or acceptability of another statement called conclusion. Arguments can be studied from three main perspectives: the logical, the dialecti ...
of the idiom). One can know that it is not part of the idiom because it is variable; for example, ''How do we get to the bottom of this situation / the claim / the phenomenon / her statement /'' etc. What this means is that theories of syntax that take the constituent to be the fundamental unit of syntactic analysis are challenged. The manner in which units of meaning are assigned to units of syntax remains unclear. This problem has motivated a tremendous amount of discussion and debate in linguistics circles and it is a primary motivator behind the
Construction Grammar Construction grammar (often abbreviated CxG) is a family of theories within the field of cognitive linguistics which posit that constructions, or learned pairings of linguistic patterns with meanings, are the fundamental building blocks of human ...
framework. A relatively recent development in the syntactic analysis of idioms departs from a constituent-based account of syntactic structure, preferring instead the catena-based account. The catena unit was introduced to linguistics by William O'Grady in 1998. Any word or any combination of words that are linked together by dependencies qualifies as a catena. The words constituting idioms are stored as catenae in the lexicon, and as such, they are concrete units of syntax. The
dependency grammar Dependency grammar (DG) is a class of modern grammatical theories that are all based on the dependency relation (as opposed to the ''constituency relation'' of phrase structure) and that can be traced back primarily to the work of Lucien Tesniè ...
trees of a few sentences containing non-constituent idioms illustrate the point: :: The fixed words of the idiom (in orange) in each case are linked together by dependencies; they form a catena. The material that is outside of the idiom (in normal black script) is not part of the idiom. The following two trees illustrate proverbs: :: The fixed words of the proverbs (in orange) again form a catena each time. The adjective ''nitty-gritty'' and the adverb ''always'' are not part of the respective proverb and their appearance does not interrupt the fixed words of the proverb. A caveat concerning the catena-based analysis of idioms concerns their status in the lexicon. Idioms are lexical items, which means they are stored as catenae in the lexicon. In the actual syntax, however, some idioms can be broken up by various functional constructions. The catena-based analysis of idioms provides a basis for an understanding of meaning compositionality. The
Principle of Compositionality In semantics, mathematical logic and related disciplines, the principle of compositionality is the principle that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its constituent expressions and the rules used to combine them ...
can in fact be maintained. Units of meaning are being assigned to catenae, whereby many of these catenae are not constituents. Various studies have investigated methods to develop the ability to interpret idioms in children with various diagnoses including Autism, Moderate Learning Difficulties, Developmental Language Disorder and typically developing weak readers.


Multiword expression

A multiword expression is "lexical units larger than a word that can bear both idiomatic and compositional meanings. (...) the term multi-word expression is used as a pre-theoretical label to include the range of phenomena that goes from collocations to fixed expressions." It is a problem in
natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) is an interdisciplinary subfield of linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence concerned with the interactions between computers and human language, in particular how to program computers to proc ...
when trying to translate lexical units such as idioms.


See also

*
Adage An adage (; Latin: adagium) is a memorable and usually philosophical aphorism that communicates an important truth derived from experience, custom, or both, and that many people consider true and credible because of its longeval tradition, i.e ...
*
Catena (linguistics) In linguistics, a catena (English pronunciation: , plural catenas or catenae; from Latin for "chain") is a unit of syntax and morphology (linguistics), morphology, closely associated with dependency grammars. It is a more flexible and inclusive uni ...
* ''
Chengyu ''Chengyu'' () are a type of traditional Chinese idiomatic expression, most of which consist of four characters. ''Chengyu'' were widely used in Classical Chinese and are still common in vernacular Chinese writing and in the spoken language t ...
'' *
Cliché A cliché ( or ) is an element of an artistic work, saying, or idea that has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even to the point of being weird or irritating, especially when at some earlier time it was consi ...
*
Collocation In corpus linguistics, a collocation is a series of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected by chance. In phraseology, a collocation is a type of compositional phraseme, meaning that it can be understood from the words t ...
* Comprehension of idioms *
English-language idioms English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the ...
*
Figure of speech A figure of speech or rhetorical figure is a word or phrase that intentionally deviates from ordinary language use in order to produce a rhetorical effect. Figures of speech are traditionally classified into '' schemes,'' which vary the ordinary ...
*
Metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wit ...
*
Phrasal verb In the traditional grammar of Modern English, a phrasal verb typically constitutes a single semantic unit composed of a verb followed by a particle (examples: ''turn down'', ''run into'' or ''sit up''), sometimes combined with a preposition (e ...
*
Principle of compositionality In semantics, mathematical logic and related disciplines, the principle of compositionality is the principle that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its constituent expressions and the rules used to combine them ...
*
Rhetorical device In rhetoric, a rhetorical device, persuasive device, or stylistic device is a technique that an author or speaker uses to convey to the listener or reader a meaning with the goal of persuading them towards considering a topic from a perspective, ...


References


Bibliography

* * Crystal, ''A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics'', 4th edition. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers. * Culicover, P. and R. Jackendoff. 2005. ''Simpler syntax''. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. * * * Jackendoff, R. 1997. ''The architecture of the language faculty''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. * Jurafsky, D. and J. Martin. 2008. ''Speech and language processing: An introduction to natural language processing, computational linguistics, and speech recognition''. Dorling Kindersley (India): Pearson Education, Inc. * Leaney, C. 2005. ''In the know: Understanding and using idioms''. New York: Cambridge University Press. * * Mel’čuk, I. 1995. "Phrasemes in language and phraseology in linguistics". In M. Everaert, E.-J. van der Linden, A. Schenk and R. Schreuder (eds.), ''Idioms: Structural and psychological perspectives'', 167–232. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum. * * * * Portner, P. 2005. ''What is meaning?: Fundamentals of formal semantics''. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. * Radford, A. ''English syntax: An introduction''. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. * Saeed, J. 2003. ''Semantics''. 2nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell.


Further reading

*


External links


''The Idioms''
– Online English idioms dictionary.
''babelite.org''
– Online cross-language idioms dictionary in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese. {{Authority control Lexical units English grammar