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Idioms
Abstract
In the literature of generative grammar, idiomaticity has been widely identified with noncompositionality. Such a definition fails to recognize several important dimensions of idiomaticity, including, among others, conventionality and figuration. We propose to distinguish IDIOMATICALLY COMBINING EXPRESSIONS (e.g. take advantage, pull strings ), whose meanings—while conventional—are distributed among their parts, from IDIOMATIC PHRASES (e.g. kick the bucket, saw logs ), which do not distribute their meanings to their components. Most syntactic arguments based on idioms are flawed, we argue, because they treat all idioms as noncompositional. A careful examination of the semantic properties of idioms and the metaphors that many of them employ helps to explain certain intriguing asymmetries in the grammatical and thematic roles of idiomatic noun phrases.
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Citations
Cited by
Croft, W., & Cruse, D. A. (2004) · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511803864 · Cited by 3,316
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Sag, I. A., Baldwin, T., Bond, F., Copestake, A., & Flickinger, D. (2002) · Lecture Notes in Computer Science · doi:10.1007/3-540-45715-1_1 · Cited by 1,016
Self-citationComposition in Distributional Models of Semantics
Mitchell, J., & Lapata, M. (2010) · Cognitive Science · doi:10.1111/j.1551-6709.2010.01106.x · Cited by 960
More than words: Frequency effects for multi-word phrases
Arnon, I., & Snider, N. (2010) · Journal of Memory and Language · doi:10.1016/j.jml.2009.09.005 · Cited by 791
The English dative alternation: The case for verb sensitivity
HOVAV, M. R., & LEVIN, B. (2008) · Journal of Linguistics · doi:10.1017/s0022226707004975 · Cited by 530
Metadata
- Authors
- Nunberg, G., Sag, I. A., & Wasow, T.
- Venue
- Language
- Publisher
- Linguistic Society of America
- Published
- 1994-09-01
- Volume
- 70
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 491-538
- ISSN
- 0097-8507 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4206786937
- Cited by
- 698
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 8.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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