idiomi, lecture 03, 13_14
TRANSCRIPT
8/11/2019 Idiomi, Lecture 03, 13_14
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Collocation and chunking
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Collocation
Language is strongly patterned: many
words occur repeatedly in certain
lexicogrammatical patterns.
Psycholinguistic research – language is
processed in chunks. The basic unit for
encoding and decoding may be the group,
set phrase, or collocation, rather thanortographic word.
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Kinds of collocation
2. A second kind of collocation ariseswhere a word requires association with amember of a certain class or category ofitem, and such collocations areconstrained lexicogrammatically as well assemantically, e.g. word rancid, adj. istypically associated with butter , fat , andfoods containing butter or fat.
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Kinds of collocation
In other cases, a word has a particular
meaning only when it is in collocation with
certain other words, e.g. face the
truth/facts/problem.
Also, selection restrictions on verbs may
specify certain kinds of subject or object,
e.g. the verb drink normally requires ahuman subject and a liquid as object.
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Kinds of collocation
3. A third kind of collocation is syntactic,
and arises where a verb, adjective, or
nominalization requires complementation
with, for example, a specified particle.Such collocations are grammatically well
formed and highly frequent, but not
necessarily holistic and independent, e.g.to be, one of , had been, you know , thank
you very much, are going to be, etc.
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Two principles underlying language
The open choice principle
The idiom principle
These two principles are diametricallyopposed,and both are required in order toaccount for language.The open choice principle – a way of seeinglanguage text as a result of a very large numberof complex choices. At each point where a unit is
completed (a word or a phrase or a clause) alarge range of choices opens up, and the onlyrestraint is grammaticalness.
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Two principles underlying language
Example: of course – orthography and
the open choice model suggests that this
sequence comprises two different choices:
one at the o f slot, and one at the course slot.
– the idiom principle suggests that it is a
single choice which coincidentally occupiestwo word spaces.
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The idiom principle
This principle is seen not only in fixed strings (e.g. ofcourse) but also in other kinds of phraseological unit,e.g. greetings and social routines demonstrate theidiom principle. Sociocultural rules of interaction restrict
choices within an exchange which may be realized infairly fixed formulations.
Sayings, similes, and proverbs also represent singlechoices, even when they are truncated or manipulated,and they may be prompted discoursally as stereotyped
responses, e.g. (every clou d has) a si lver l ining ; nonews is good news – these are predictable commentson common experiences.
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The idiom principle
There are also recurrent clauses and other
units that demonstrate the idiom principle,
e.g. from can I come in?, are you ready?
to it’s as easy as falling off a log .
Memorized clauses and clause
sequences form a high proportion of the
fluent stretches of speech heard ineveryday conversation.
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Psycholinguistic aspects of
chunking
Research into language acquisition –
suggests that language is learned, stored,
retrieved, and produced in multi-word
items, not just as individual words orterms.
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Processing of FEIs
Research into the psycholinguistic processing of FEIsadresses questions such as: how FEIs are recognized;how they are stored in the mental lexicon; whetheridiomatic meanings are retrieved before, after, orsimultaneously with literal meanings; how variations
and inflections are handled.In attempting to find out how FEIs are processed, thenotion of the ‘idiom list’ has been incorporated into thehypothesis that idioms are stored separately in themental lexicon. The analysis of the literal meaning
occurs separately from the idiomatic meaning. Theliteral meaning is normally processed first, and when theprocessing fails to yield an interpretation for the context,the ‘idiom list’ is accessed.
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Processing of FEIs
According to another hypothesis, idiomsare stored and retrieved like singlewords and idiomatic and literalmeanings are processedsimultaneously. The experiments showthat subjects decode idiomatic meaningsfaster than literal ones.
There is a third hypothesis, whichintroduces the notion of the ‘key’ word,which is a component word in an FEI thattriggers recognition of the whole.
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Lexicalization
With respect to FEIs, lexicalization is the process bywhich a string of words and morphemes becomesinstitutionalized as part of the language and develops itsown specialist meaning or function.
Lexicalization of FEIs results from a three-way tensionbetween quantitative criterion of institutionalization, thelexicogrammatical criterion of fixedness, and thequalitative criterion of non-compositionality, but there areproblems with all these criteria: institutionalization andfrequency are not enough on their own, fixedness can be
misleading (there is instability of forms), non-compositionality is dependent on the ways in which themeanings of individual words are analysed both indictionaries and notional lexicons.
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Diachronic considerations
Instituationalization is a diachronic process – much of the lexical, syntactic and semanticanomalousness of FEIs results from historicalprocesses. Cranberry collocations such as to
and fro and kith and kin contain lexical items thatwere formerly current.
The ill-formed collocation th rough th ick andthin is an ellipsis of through th icket and th inwood , and of course is an ellipsis of a matterof course , or of cou rse and custom , or ofcommon course .
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Diachronic considerations
FEIs disappear, and others emerge.
Metaphors, initially transparent, come infrom sporting, technical, and other
specialist domains, e.g. businessmetaphors such as there’s no such thingas a free lunch. As neologisms becomeinstitutionalized and divorced from their
original contexts of use, the explanation ormotivation for the metaphor may becomelost or obscure.
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Diachronic considerations
Some metaphorical FEIs and proverbs may be
traced back to classical or Biblical sayings or
historical events, e.g .better late than never , all
roads lead to Rome , an eye for an eye , burnone’s bridges/boats.
Catchphrases drawn from cinema, television,
politics, journalism and so on become
institutionalized as sayings and other kinds offormula – this is an obvious way in which English
fixed expressions realize intertextuality:
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And now for something completely different
Didn’t she do well
Go ahead, make my day
I think we should be told
I’ll be back
I’ll have what she’s having
Pass the sick bag, Alice
That will do nicely
There is no alternative (abbreviated as TINA)
This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship
The white heat of this revolution
We wuz robbedIt takes two to tango (song by Hoffman and Manning)
When the going gets tough, the tough get going (popularized by JosephKennedy)
The opera isn’t over until the fat lady sings (Dan Cook)
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