Speakers' assumptions about the lexical flexibility of idioms

Abstract

In three experiments, we examined why some idioms can be lexically altered and still retain their figurative meanings (e.g., John buttoned his lips about Mary can be changed into John fastened his lips about Mary and still mean "John didn't say anything about Mary"), whereas other idioms cannot be lexically altered without losing their figurative meanings (e.g., John kicked the bucket, meaning "John died," loses its idiomatic meaning when changed into John kicked the pail). Our hypothesis was that the lexical flexibility of idioms is determined by speakers' assumptions about the ways in which parts of idioms contribute to their figurative interpretations as a whole. The results of the three experiments indicated that idioms whose individual semantic components contribute to their overall figurative meanings (e.g., go out on a limb) were judged as less disrupted by changes in their lexical items (e.g., go out on a branch) than were nondecomposable idioms (e.g., kick the bucket) when their individual words were altered (e.g., punt the pail). These findings lend support to the idea that both the syntactic productivity and the lexical makeup of idioms are matters of degree, depending on the idioms' compositional properties. This conclusion suggests that idioms do not form a unique class of linguistic items, but share many of the properties of more literal language.Idiomatic phrases in English differ in the degree to which their lexical items can be changed and still maintain their figurative meanings. For example, the word button in the idiomatic phrase button your lip (meaning ••don't say anything") can be changed to fasten your lips without disrupting the figurative meaning of the expression. Similarly, the phrase eat one's words can have its verb changed without disrupting its overall figurative interpretation (i.e., swallow one's words). Idioms such as button your lips and eat one's words seem to be lexically flexible, in that their individual components can be altered without significant damage to their nonliteral meanings. Other idiomatic phrases seem to be lexically frozen, in that changing any of their individual components severely disrupts their figurative meanings. For instance, speakers can say kick the bucket to mean "die," but they cannot say kick the pail or even punt the bucket without losing the idiomatic sense of the expression.Our purpose in this paper is to present evidence in support of a hypothesis explaining exactly why some idioms are lexically flexible and others are not. We suggest that the lexical flexibility of idioms is not an arbitrary phenomenon, but depends specifically on how the internal semantics of these phrases relate to their overall figurative interpretations.

That’s the way the cookie bounces: Syntactic and semantic components of experimentally elicited idiom blendsß

“…The naming times were slightly faster for decomposable idiom pairs (791 msec) than for nondecomposable pairs (804) Error analyses. To ensure that the null result could not be attributed to norming disparities, we compared ratings for overlapping items in the published literature (Gibbs, 1987;Gibbs, Nayak, Bolton, & Keppel, 1989;Gibbs, Nayak, & Cutting, 1989). Of the items in the present experiment, there were six used by Gibbs and his colleagues.…”

“…This solves the problem of syntactic flexibility, but raises another. Idioms vary in the extent to which they can undergo lexical manipulation without disrupting their figurative meaning (Gibbs, Nayak, Bolton, & Keppel, 1989). Wasow, Sag, and Nunberg (1983) showed that the individual parts ofsome idioms can be internally modified by the insertion of adjectives or quantifiers as in "Mary really touched a couple of nerves."…”

Why are idioms recognized fast?

“…As noted above, according to LRH idioms are mentally represented and processed as individual words, and the comprehension of decomposable and nondecomposable idioms is achieved through different processes: Decomposable idioms involve the same mechanisms of lexical retrieval and syntactic parsing taking place during the comprehension of literal expressions, whereas nondecomposable idioms require processes akin to those operating in the recognition of individual words (Gibbs, Nayak, Bolton, & Keppel, 1989). The IDH posits that only compositional expressions are fast.…”

Increasing Metaphor Awareness in Legal English Teaching

“…it is possible to call evidence illegally gathered "the fruit of the rotten tree", but also of the "poison tree" and even of the "poisonous tree", but in general, metaphorical expressions, like many Vol. 4(2)(2016): [165][166][167][168][169][170][171][172][173][174][175][176][177][178][179][180][181][182][183] idioms in general, often do not allow for lexical flexibility (see, for instance, Gibbs, Nayak, Bolton, & Keppel, 1989;Glucksberg, 1993: 19-23); for instance, "under" may not be replaced by "beneath" in *beneath Section XX of the Act, or "barred" may not be replaced by "prohibited" or "banned" in *time-prohibited or *time-banned. This is where two types of exercises may be prepared: the first type would be simple matching or gap-filling tasks, but also specific error prevention exercises.…”