Idioms, polysemy, context

1

Idioms, Polysemy, and Context: A Model Based on Nigerian Arabic

JONATHAN OWENS

Bayreuth University

Abstract. This article contributes to the debate between monosemic and

polysemic approaches to linguistic semantics by a close examination of Nigerian

Arabic idiomatic expressions involving the keyword ‘head’. Three broad cate-

gories of constraints on polysemy can be identified, which limit polysemy, but

not to the extent that a fully monosemic account can be motivated. An inherent,

stipulative polysemy resides in idioms and in their constitutive lexemes. The

attempt to motivate a monosemic account highlights factors constraining poly-

semy, sets limits to their effects, suggests a taxonomy which brings together

essential structural and semantic aspects of idioms, and simultaneously eluci-

dates the rich, multifaceted world of a simple lexeme.

1. Monosemy, polysemy, context. Undoubtedly one of the central problems

of semantics is polysemy. Anticipating the pivot of discussion in this article,

does Nigerian Arabic \aas ‘head’ have a single meaning, or does it have many

meanings? The translational equivalents in (1a)—(1g) suggest that the answer is

“many.”1

(1a) al¤hebíl kula bu¤rub:¤ú fœ \aas¤a

DEF-rope also 3-tie-they.it on head-his

‘The rope as well, they tie it on its head.’

(1b) \aas¤a bi¤šiil al¤gœ\á ajala

head-his 3-carry DEF-study quickly

‘He learns quickly.’

(1c) al¤kalaam šaal \uusse katiir¤aat

DEF-word carried heads many-PL

‘The issue had a number of ramifications.’ / ‘The issue became complicated.’

(1d) šaal ar¤\aas

carried DEF-head

‘He took the lead.’ / ‘He headed the column.’

(1e) raas¤a šaayil

head-his carrying

‘He is troubled.’

(1f) šuqul šaal \aas¤í

Something carried head-my

‘Something distracted me.’

2 ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS 57 NO. 1

(1g) kalaam¤ak šaal \aas¤í

word-your carried head-my

‘What you said convinced me.’

Linguistic scrutiny, however, reveals the matter to be more complicated. As

is well known, there are two opposed positions on this issue. What appears to be

a minority position is the reductionist, monosemic interpretation, the one-\aas

approach. The opposed position countenances a high degree of polysemy. Indeed,

in the so-called classical structural approach to polysemy, a simple test would

demand that a high degree of polysemy be recognized in the word \aas.

1.1. Monosemy and polysemy. The classic characterization (Quine 1960)

recognizes polysemy when different senses of a lexeme can be meaningfully con-

joined. In (2), different senses of lamma raas, literally, ‘gather head’ (where raas

is a phonetic variant of \aas, as noted above), are represented in the same con-

joined phrase (the first line of the example); one sense is asserted in the first

conjunct (‘we joined together’ in the literal sense of assembling in one place),

and a different sense is negated in the second conjunct (‘we did not unite’ in the

figurative sense of agreeing). The conjoined phrase is not felt to be contradictory;

this implies that the two senses are distinct. (The additional contextualization

provided by the rest of the example shows how consultants understood the dif-

ferent senses.)

(2) A: lammeena raasna haw ma lammeená da

‘We united and at the same time, didn’t unite.’

B: keef da

‘What do you mean?’

A: lammeená da, geýedna bakaan waahid; ma lammeená da, ma qassadna foog

al¤kalaam

‘We got together, in the sense that we all gathered (to discuss) in one spot. At the

same time, we didn’t unite because we couldn’t agree on the matter.’

The logical test is useful in that it shows that one is not dealing with vague-

ness (Tuggy 1993).2 A preliminary demonstration of polysemy, or “ostensible

polysemy” as it can be called, does not appear particularly rewarding, however,

when confronted with the reality that in the database used here, for a single

keyword that serves as the basis of the current article, there are something like

sixty or more idioms whose senses can be demonstrated to be distinct from the

literal meaning of \aas, in a way analogous to (2).

As noted, there have been two broad responses to ostensible polysemy. One

is, as it were, to deny it, while the other has been to embrace it, albeit within the

framework of a theory of semantics or cognitive linguistics that structures

polysemy in particular ways.

2015 JONATHAN OWENS 3

Those who deny it are the monosemists. An early monosemist position, and

one still relevant as an analytic standard to conceptualizations of figurative

language (see discussion around (20) and (23) in section 4.2.2), is that of Searle

(1980; see Taylor [1995] for further summary of earlier monosemic approaches).

Searle assumes as a primitive a difference between literal and figurative (1980:

122)3 and given it, once an utterance is recognized as figurative, derives the

meanings in the following illustrative way (1980:115, 120). The first step is (3).

(3) An utterance is recognized as not literal.

Given (3), certain principles (Searle outlines seven, though he says these are

nonexhaustive) enable interlocutors to associate the predicate with metaphoric

meaning. These principles are possible because of shared strategies that restrict

the possible interpretations of the metaphoric meaning. Importantly, Searle

does not hold that the relevant, metaphorically interpreted attributes of a

predicate are inherent parts of the predicate. Rather, they are derived online via

the set of principles. The utterance (4) will, via his Principle 2–“Things that are

P are contingently R” (1980:116) (where R = metaphoric meaning)–allow the

predicate, be a pig be contingently understood as in (5).

(4) Sam is a pig.

(5) ‘Sam is filthy, gluttonous, sloppy . . .’

‘Filthy’, ‘gluttonous’, and ‘sloppy’ are literal, inherent attributes of the noun

pig, which interlocutors will pick up on to interpret (5). However, pig does not

have the sense of a ‘gluttonous person’.

Those who embrace the polysemic position probably represent the dominant

perspective today. Among cognitive linguists in particular there is an underlying

assumption that lexical structure is biased towards polysemy. Lewandowska-

Tomaszczyk expresses this position somewhat programmatically: “Whereas

monosemy assumes a minimal, narrow semantic representation, Cognitive Lin-

guistics tends to favor a rich form of representation in which each lexical mean-

ing is an access point to a network of related categories” (2010:153). Also within

the cognitive linguistic perspective, Tuggy simply states that “polysemy is ramp-

ant” (2003:324, see also Tuggy 1999:357), and he then proceeds to describe the

Nahuatl (Nawatl) verb kiisa ‘emerge’ in terms of schemas of different levels of

generality. Brugman and Lakoff again assume, rather than argue for, the poly-

semy of ‘over’ (1988:290), and describe a network of related, polysemous senses

in terms of image schemas, connected by links of various types.4 Taylor alludes

to basic problems in “rampant polysemy” (2006:52—53), namely, that it implies a

very large set of fixed meanings in the storage lexicon. Moreover, there is per-

haps no upper limit to the number of polysemous senses that can be discerned

for a lexeme.


Some recent approaches build a bridge of sorts between the monosemist and

polysemist approach, endorsing polysemy, but not without conditions, as it were.

Evans writes that polysemy develops when “situated implicatures associated

with a particular context can become reanalysed as distinct sense units” (2009:

166). However, she does not expand on how it is discerned when a distinct sense

unit has indeed become established. Looking at the issue in Searlean terms, how

does one recognize that a new sense unit has a cognitive reality, and is not mere-

ly a token contingently derived via a set of principles applied online?

Riemer (2005) recognizes a core meaning of a lexeme and develops further

meanings via metonymic or metaphoric interpretation. He begins with what he

terms “prototypical centres” (2005:327), also termed “core meaning” (2005:345).

Analyzing the Warlpiri verb pakarni, he begins with a meaning of ‘hit’ or ‘hit

with an object such as a hand’. This verb has a number of further meanings,

including ‘kill’, ‘pierce’, ‘paint’, and ‘perform dance ceremony’. Each of these

meanings is derived via a metaphoric or metonymic application. The meanings

‘kill’ and ‘perform a dance’, for instance, are both seen as effect metonymies: the

meaning ‘performing a dance ceremony’ reflects the fact that dances involve

hitting feet or instruments against the ground, while ‘killing’ is a causal meto-

nymy from hitting.

Both of these approaches begin with a basic meaning and a set of principles

or procedures by which polysemy develops. The link to monosemy resides in

identifying a core meaning as basic.

1.2. Contextualized approaches. The perspectives outlined above concen-

trate the question of polysemy in the single lexical item. An alternative, which

is sometimes loosely associated with a monosemic approach, is to highlight the

role of context in defining polysemy. One explicit expression of this position is

that of Allwood (2003), who offers a different approach to monosemy, searching

for a way to bring all meanings of a lexeme within a single concept.5 He first

outlines two approaches. One is what he terms the “Gesamtbedeutung” (‘holistic

meaning’) approach, which looks for the “largest common denominator” (2003:

39) into which all token meanings of a lexeme can be fit. On the other hand, the

“Grundbedeutung” (‘basic meaning’) approach searches for an essential, core

meaning from which single, differentiated meanings can be derived. Allwood is

skeptical of both approaches, in particular because of the difficulty of specifying

how, linguistically, one gets to individual, conventionalized meanings. Instead,

Allwood advocates what he terms “meaning potentials” (2003:41—45), whose

basic idea rests on identifying a simple monosemic meaning whose apparent

polysemy is constrained “by other words and by extralinguistic context” (2003:

44).6 Pragmatic and collocational environment together form what Allwood

terms “meaning potentials.” He is, however, unfortunately not very specific

about how the collocational factor can be operationalized in the conceptual-

ization of monosemy.


In this article, I would like to address the polysemy-monosemy debate from

a different, methodological angle. Whereas it is possible to offer descriptive sys-

tems supporting a monosemic (e.g., Searle) or polysemic account of meaning

(e.g., Tuggy 2003, 2010; Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk 2010), it is equally neces-

sary to ask what factors and criteria are relevant to supporting the one approach

or the other. A crucial aspect of this inquiry pertains to the multifaceted role of

context in either limiting, or supporting polysemy as opposed to monosemy. A

close examination of contextual factors suggests that neither an unambiguous

“monosemy only” or “unlimited polysemy” approach does justice to the nuanced

meanings that emerge from a systematic examination of individual factors

which bear on semantic interpretation.7

1.3. Criteria. Whereas much of the recent discussion on monosemy-polysemy

has concentrated on the best representation of the phenomena, often using

diagrams, there has been far less discussion of what criteria should be invoked

to decide where a monosemic representation should end in favor of polysemy, or,

alternatively, how or whether polysemy should be constrained.

For instance, in Tuggy’s (2003) article, different senses of Nahuatl kiisa

(okis and okiski in the examples below) are found, such as those in (6a) and (6b).

(6a) kittown¤n tomasa tlenoh imak okis

she.says-the Thomasina what.is on.her.hand it.emerged

‘Thomasina wonders what it is that has broken out on her hand.’ (Tuggy 2003:330)

(6b) n rufino no okimaka totonki yekin yalla okiski

the Rufino also it.had.hit.him hot barely yesterday it.emerged

‘Rufino had also gotten a fever; it did not stop (break) till yesterday.’ (Tuggy 2003:

331)

In Nahuatl, kiisa is part of expressions that convey the meanings ‘break out (of

sickness)’ and ‘break (of fever)’ (i.e., sickness emerges and leaves the body). That

the two sentences (6a) and (6b) have different meanings is beyond doubt. What

Tuggy does not explore, however, is the alternative to attributing the different

sentence meanings to the different polysemic meanings of kiisa. In this case in

particular, he does not discuss the degree to which other parts of the sentence,

above all the subject, contribute to–i.e., constrain–different interpretations of

kiisa. The translational equivalents in this case, ‘break out’ and ‘break (fever)’,

might be interpreted as being wholly dependent on the nature of the subject

(this point was already made by Searle [1980:115]). Instead, like Lakoff and

Brugman, Tuggy assumes that the polysemy resides in a single lexeme, kiisa

(see (25c) and (25d) below). The fact that this polysemy is represented on a hier-

archicalized schematic diagram does not hide the fact that interesting linguistic

dependencies might exist explaining at least some of the polysemy.


To consider the factor of context systematically, it is heuristically useful to

take as a baseline approach one of the two approaches to meaning. In such a

debate one can begin with the simpler of the two positions and see how it fares

against a detailed set of data, such as the one from Nigerian Arabic that I pre-

sent below. The simpler of the two positions is the monosemic one, since it would

hold that despite the seven translational contrasts in (1a)—(1g), there is still a

single lexeme, \aas, with a unitary meaning. This article thus tries to motivate

this position, moving to a polysemous approach only if it fails. Indeed, it turns

out that the monosemist position fails in different ways. At the same time,

pursuing the monosemic position brings out interesting ways in which polysemy

is both defined and constrained.

The data itself comes from a detailed examination of idioms in Nigerian

Arabic (NA), concentrating on the rich idiomaticity of a single lexeme, \aas

‘head’. I examine this question from four different perspectives, all of them

embedded in a discussion and description of idioms in Nigerian Arabic as intro-

duced in section 2. Within each perspective, the background assumption is that,

other things being equal, a monosemic representation is preferable. This serves

as a null hypothesis. A monosemic approach assumes that elements of context–

collocational and pragmatic, for instance (discussed above)–are operative in

producing the observed, differentiated meaning of single lexical items.

To this end, in section 4 the roles of grammatical, functional, lexical, and

pragmatic context in limiting polysemy are considered, and in section 5 these

factors are incorporated in a contextualized attribute extension sense taxonomy

of one idiom keyword which brings the factors together in a single representa-

tion.

In section 3, I add a further methodological perspective, namely the behavior

of \aas in actual usage, as defined by a large corpus of spoken Nigerian Arabic.

As becomes evident, reference to the corpus helps to decide certain issues while

contributing a greater degree of precision to others, even if important questions

are still left unanswered.

2. Idioms and the data. Idioms would appear to be very good candidates to

contribute to the debate on polysemy because idioms inherently imply context-

ualization of individual lexical meanings. Indeed, this exceptional property of

idioms inherently contradicts the summary of Ravin and Leacock, who write

that “the common model . . . is to define the meaning of words independent of

context . . . and then establish principles according to which word meanings

interact when found together in a particular context” (2000:5). As is seen below,

Nigerian Arabic \aas ‘head’ has a rich semantics, yet in a sense, no semantics of

interest outside of the severely fixed idiomatic collocations it occurs in. One

needs to know the context before one can ascertain its meaning. This makes

idioms interesting for present purposes, since the monosemic approach gives

particular weight to context. As Nunberg, Sag, and Wasow (1994) note (see


discussion below), idioms by definition imply a disjunction between the meaning

of an individual word in isolation, and the meaning of the idiom as a whole. If

idioms are not “sense units,” they are not idioms.

The idioms used in this study consist of fixed collocations. Lexical constit-

uents of an idiom are represented in curly brackets, e.g., {lamma \aas} ‘unite’

represents an idiom or set of idioms whose lexical constituents are lamma and

\aas; if a particular idiom involves some distinctive grammatical or other fea-

ture, that distinctive feature is also included within the brackets, e.g., {šaal

a\¤\aas} ‘take the lead’, where the definite article ar¤ uniquely marks this idiom

(see (25a)). All the idioms discussed in this article consist of two lexical items.8 I

concentrate on idioms containing one keyword, \aas (with variants raas and

\aab) whose literal meaning is ‘head’, but whose idiomatic usage, as is seen

below, encompasses a considerable range of ostensible meanings. Other idio-

matic keywords are adduced as necessary. Lexical components other than the

headword–the collocates–in the idioms treated here are of two types. One is a

single lexical item that itself is constitutive of the idiom in question. In (1e)

above, for instance, the meaning ‘convince’ requires both the keyword \aas and

the collocate šaal ‘carry, pick up and keep’. A semantically related lexeme such

as axad ‘take’ would force a literal meaning, axad \aas¤í ‘he took my head’

(somewhere, for some purpose). I term these as “fixed collocate idioms.” The

other type of collocate is an open set of items delimitable by a simple parameter,

as in (7), discussed further in (43) below.

(7) \aas al¤qalla

head DEF-grain

‘tassel of grain’

For \aas to take the sense ‘tassel’, it requires a collocate that denotes some type

of grain that sends out flowers (its tassel)–this could be any of many types of

millet or guinea corn typical of northeastern Nigerian agriculture. The class of

collocates is open ended, but its identifying parameters are fixed. These are

termed “open-ended idioms.”

The division into keyword vs. collocate engenders two questions, one of

major significance. The first, lesser issue, is the basis on which the individual

lexemes are identified as keyword or collocate. This has two answers. The first is

severely practical: this article is interested in exploring the semantics of \aas,

and therefore it is designated the keyword. A second answer is that usually in an

idiomatic collocation one of the two collocates occurs in a wider range of idio-

matic usages than the other, and this enables it to be identified as the keyword.

For instance, thus far no other idioms have been found in which qalla ‘grain’ is

combined with some lexical item other than \aas. However, exploring the range

of issues associated with the idiomaticity of individual words is beyond the scope

of this article. Some methodological aspects of the problem are touched on sec-

tion 3, when the corpus is examined.


The more fundamental question in the keyword-collocate division is which

element, if any, is polysemous–the keyword \aas, the collocate, both words

individually, or the entire unit? My answer to this emerges in part in section 5,

when a model of idiom structure is developed.

The idioms discussed in this article are all idiomatically combining expres-

sions in the sense of Nunberg, Sag, and Wasow (1994). In fact, they have no

grammatical properties that distinguish them from nonidiomatic collocations.

For instance, given (1e), repeated as (8a), one can topicalize, as in (8b), or passi-

vize, as in (8c) (for detailed discussion, see Owens 2014:135—38; see also (28b)

below, where nominalization of a V + O idiom is given).

(8a) kalaam¤ak šaal \aas¤í


‘You convinced me.’

(8b) \aas¤í kalaam¤ak šaal¤a

head-my word-your carried-it.M

‘As for what you said, it convinced me.’

(8c) \aas¤í an¤šaal

head-my PSV-carry

‘I was convinced.’

I do not utilize Nunberg, Sag, and Wasow’s further criteria for character-

izing idioms, opacity, compositionality, and conventionality. Opacity and com-

positionality measure, as it were, the disjunction between the idiomatic meaning

and “the meaning we would predict for the collocation if we were to consult only

the rules that determine the meanings of the constituents in isolation” (1994:

498). While agreeing that these properties are a relevant way of characterizing

how idioms are recognized, they do not form an essential aspect of the issue of

polysemy and idioms as discussed here. More fundamentally, when working in a

very foreign cultural context, before operationalizing these criteria one would

need to form some sort of baseline of expectations for what, for instance, {šaal

\aas} ‘carry head’ would mean in a Nigerian Arabic context. Expectations de-

pend to an important degree on what linguistic and cultural background one

comes from. Instead, this article begins with a simpler and more austerely

Searlean approach: meanings are either literal or nonliteral or abstract, idioms

by definition being nonliteral.

I do use the terms “compositionality” and “conventionality,” though in ways

different from Nunberg, Sag, and Wasow. Compositionality refers to the indi-

vidual lexemic senses of keyword plus collocate accessed in order to compose a

given idiomatic meaning, as is discussed in greater detail in section 5. Note that

this usage differs also from that sometimes used in psycholinguistic studies

(e.g., Titone and Connine 1999:1656), whereby compositionality refers to the


accessing of the literal meanings of idiom collocates, in this sense opposed

to a “noncompositional” or “lexical representation” (Swinney and Cutler 1979)

model.

As to conventionality, rather than considering it to be a semantic proper-

ty of idioms, I use it in the more mundane sense of what is adhered to in the

community–community norms (see section 3). Community norms are estab-

lished in this article by the frequency of a given idiom in a linguistic corpus. The

corpus was collected over a period of nearly ten years (1991—2001) in northeast

Nigeria in the context of investigating Nigerian Arabic from a number of per-

spectives, grammatical (Owens 1993), sociolinguistic (Owens 1998), and situa-

tional (Owens 2005, 2007a).9 It is representative of Nigerian Arabic in a way to

be expected of sociolinguistically based corpora, including texts both from rural

areas and the major metropolis of Maiduguri, and having different genres. In

all, four hundred thousand words are available for rapid search,10 about two

hundred fifty thousand of which are also available in audio format (Owens and

Hassan 2012).

3. Conventionality. Conventionality in this article is understood as a pro-

perty defined against a reasonably large and representative corpus, and taken to

be a property of the community of usage.

The corpus consists of four hundred thousand words of oral texts. A full

description of the data is provided by Owens and Hassan (2012) (see above).

About ten hours of the texts have been translated into English and are partly

annotated. To my knowledge, this is largest oral corpus available for any single

Arabic dialect area, anywhere. All in all, as oral corpora go, its size compares

favorably with a number of those for much better-studied languages such as

Spanish or French (Cresti and Moneglia 2005), and I assume it to be represen-

tative of spoken Nigerian Arabic until more resources become available.

In addition, much briefer comparative reference is made to Egyptian Arabic,

also in corpus form (as described in n. 25).

It is in particular from the corpus that the rich idiomaticity of \aas was

identified–upwards of sixty ostensibly distinct idioms involving this word. The

appendix lists, according to a categorization developed in section 5, a repre-

sentative sample of these \aas-based idioms in Nigerian Arabic.

3.1. The keyword \aas: conventionalized as what? The examination of the

corpus properties of \aas serves two purposes. A basic one is informational: does

idiomaticity in fact play an important role in understanding \aas in Nigerian

Arabic? A second one is more ambitious: from the corpus data, can one auto-

matically discern evidence bearing on the question of whether \aas is mono-

semic or polysemic? This inquiry proceeds in two stages. First, it is shown that

frequencies alone cannot be used to differentiate figurative from literal mean-

ings (in the present section and section 3.2); it is then shown (section 3.3) that


corpus data does indeed reveal important differences between literal and figura-

tive meanings of collocates, though not from a simple count of collocational adja-

cency (as in sections 3.1 and 3.2), but rather in terms of something that can be

termed “discourse embeddedness, which, as will be seen, refers to the avail-

ability of a referring entity to coreference in adjacent discourse.”

Among words for body parts in the Nigerian Arabic corpus, \aas appears to

be the most frequent. There are 308 tokens in all (literal or idiomatic), amount-

ing to 0.08 percent of all words in the corpus. No exhaustive comparison with

all other body parts is available at this point, but by way of comparison, gakb‘heart’, another frequent body part, has 101 tokens (0.025 percent), rijil ‘foot’

has 115 (0.028 percent), ýeen ‘eye’ has 80 (0.02025 percent), and kitif ‘shoulder’

just two. A first, striking observation about \aas is that its literal meaning, a

physical ‘head’, represents a rather small minority of its tokens. Examples such

as (1a) are somewhat unusual.

Basically \aas has three types of meanings: literal (as in (1a)), abstract or

idiomatic, and reflexive. The last, not discussed in the present article, is illus-

trated in (9), where \aas is used as a reflexive pronoun (see Owens 2014:146—

47).

(9) bi¤yeerit le Wumt¤a mine kula bi¤yeerit le \aas¤a

3-farm for self-his who all 3-farm for head-his

‘He farms for himself; each one farms for themselves.’ (TV72c)

Counts of tokens of the three meaning types are shown in table 1. One token in

which \aas occurs as part of a name of village, \aas al¤fiil ‘head of the elephant’,

was not counted, and there are eight tokens still unclassified. These are included

in the “other” category in the table. Note that only the 308 tokens of the

“abstract” and “literal” categories are included in the following analysis.

Table 1. Three Types of \aas

ABSTRACT 251 70.5%

LITERAL 57 16.0%

REFLEXIVE 39 11.0%

OTHER 9 2.5%

TOTAL 356 100.0%

It is outside the scope of the present article to pursue the broader com-

parative issue of how far other body part lexemes behave like \aas. It does

appear that \aas is at the higher end of an abstraction scale. Looking at other

prominent body parts occurring in idioms, iid ‘hand’ and ýeen ‘eye’ also divide

between abstract and literal meanings, but with these two lexical items the

literal meanings clearly dominate, as the raw scores show: 65 literal tokens vs.

29 idiomatic ones for iid and 58 literal tokens vs. 22 idiomatic ones for ýeen. On


the other hand gakb ‘heart’, discussed in section 4.2.3 below, has comparatively

a far higher number of idiomatic tokens, all of its 101 tokens being idiomatic.

In any case, leaving reflexives and “other” out of the discussion for the rest

of this article, in general it can be said that Nigerian Arabic \aas is idiomatic

to a far greater degree than it is literal, so that the answer to the first question

is that indeed, the idiomaticity of \aas does play a fundamental role in this

language. The ratio of idiomatic to literal tokens is close to 3.5:1.

Idiomaticity implies a figurative meaning, as is elaborated on in the follow-

ing sections. An initial interpretation of the figures might be that what is re-

sponsible for the great disparity between the frequencies of figurative and literal

uses is the polysemy of \aas. As a starting point, table 2 gives the numbers of

tokens of every \aas idiom that is represented by five or more tokens in the

corpus (the “Token” column), along with the percentage that this represents of

the total number (308) of tokens of \aas in the corpus (the “% \aas column); the

“% collocate” column of the table shows what percentage of the total number of

occurrences of the collocate in the corpus (in parentheses) the tokens in the

idiom represent (thus, in the first line, there are 461 total instances of lamma in

the corpus, of which 10.2 percent occur in the 47 tokens of the idiom pattern

{lamma \aas}). Furthermore, for all fixed collocations where the collocate is a

content word (rather than a function words such as a preposition), the sum of

the number of tokens of \aas and the collocate that occur in the idiom is divided

by the total number of tokens of both \aas and the collocate in the corpus, and

this is given as a percentage in the “% key + collocate” column.11

Table 2. \aas Idiomatic Collocations with Five or More Tokens in the Corpus

IDIOM TOKEN % \aas % COLLOCATE % KEY + COLLOCATE

{lamma \aas} ‘unite’ 47 15.2% 10.2% (461) 12.2%

(see (30))

{fata \aas} ‘enlighten’ 34 11.0% 54.0% (63) 18.3%

(see (46))

{\aas X = top} (see (41)) 13 4.2%

{fi \aas} ‘on/at head’, i.e., 12 3.8%

‘for self’

{hana \aas} ‘of head’, i.e., 11 3.5%

‘for self, own initiative’

{ka\ab \aas} ‘remember’ 6 1.9% 2.4% (244) 2.1%

{ligi \aas} (see (17)) 5 1.6% 0.4% (1071) 0.7%

{foog \aas} ‘on head’ 5 1.6%

‘responsible for’

TOTAL 133 41.0%

The idioms in table 2 account for 60 percent of all figurative tokens of \aas. Note

that there are nearly as many tokens of the single idiom {lamma \aas} as there

are of all literal \aas meanings together, and, indeed, the entire idiom, i.e.,

maiduguri

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{keyword + collocate} together can constitute a high percentage of the total

tokens of the constituting lexemes. The idiom {fata \aas} claims nearly 20 per-

cent of the respective lexemic tokens.12

It might be claimed that the different meanings of \aas as defined in the

following sections are what are responsible for these distributions. For instance,

the idiomatic sense of \aas as representing an individual (an idea developed in

section 5 below; see (52)) would sanction {lamma \aas}, or \aas in the sense of

‘individual’s cognitive state’ would sanction {fata \aas}. In support of this, one

might observe that these two idiomatic meanings are not only unusual in some

sense, but together account for 25 percent of all \aas tokens, as well as large

percentages of all {keyword collocate} tokens for these two idioms. It would be

tempting to conclude that one can discern idiomaticity merely from determining

where significant collocational distributions are established. It might then be

argued that if the idiomaticity, in turn, depends on the polysemy of \aas, poly-

semy plays an important role in determining the frequency of usage of \aas in

Nigerian Arabic.

This perspective can be provisionally discarded for two reasons. First, there

are unequivocally idiomatic constructions, such as {ligi \aas}, that constitute a

very low percent of all \aas tokens and a tiny proportion of the {keyword collo-

cate} complex in this case. However, {ligi \aas} is no less idiomatic than {lamma

\aas} in meaning. Idiomaticity as such, as an abstract property, does not auto-

matically ensure widespread collocational usage.

Secondly, if one simply counts tokens without relating the collocations to a

wider context, the frequencies of the idiomatic collocations here are no different

from those of nonidiomatic collocations, such as sara(h) (be) + bagar ‘take cattle

to daily pasture’. An extended comparison elucidates this point.

3.2. Statistics for literally interpreted collocations. Nigerian Arabs were

originally, and until today to a large degree still are, a cattle-rearing culture.

Whether they keep their cattle in villages, or herd with them in nomadic camps,

a daily activity is to take them to pasture, expressed in the verb sara(h) ‘pasture

cattle (or goats/sheep)’. This activity is described in many of the texts, so that a

total of 106 tokens of sara(h) are recorded. These occur in verb (perfect, imper-

fect)13 and verbal noun (sára/sarha) form.

As might be expected, sara occurs overwhelmingly, though not exclusively,

in the context of bagar (or, less commonly, qanam ‘sheep’). There are three

common constructions, shown here in (10)—(12).

(10) V + be + O, where O = bagar

le an¤nahaar ni¤sœra be l¤bagar

to DEF-day we-pasture with DEF-cattle

‘Until the daytime we pasture the cattle.’ (IM10)


(11) S + V, where S = bagar

wa hinaak al¤bagar bi¤sœrh¤an fi lubb al¤gašš

and there DEF-cattle 3-pasture-F.PL in middle DEF-grass

‘And there the cattle pasture in the midst of the grass.’ (IM20)

(12) VN + possessor, where possessor = bagar

bala sarh¤it al¤bagar bi¤hart¤u

other pasturing DEF-cattle 3-cultivate-PL

‘Other than pasturing cattle, they farm.’ (TV44)

In all of these cases, as with the {lamma \aas} tokens, the frequency of the

collocations can be formally measured, as in table 3.

Table 3. Frequency of sara(h)

COLLOCATION TOKENS % sarah %bagar (1015) % KEY + COLLOCATE

sarah + be + bagar = O 56 54.0% 5.5%

bagar = S + sara 14 13.0% 1.3%

sarha VN + bagar possessor 3 3.0% 0.2%

TOTAL 73 70.0% 7.0% 13.0%

sarah/sarha without bagar 31 30.0%

The lexeme bagar may occur overtly, as in (10)—(12), or it may be is cross-

referenced anaphorically, as in (13). (In this example, hin is a feminine plural

pronoun, referring to the feminine plural noun bagar.)

(13) bi¤sœra bee¤hin

3-pasture with-them.F

‘He pastures them.’ (GR21)

In some cases, sara does occur absolutely, as it were, without collocating with

bagar, as in (14).

(14) ana ma saree¤t

I not pasture-I

‘I never pastured.’ (IM138)

The lexemes sarah and bagar imply each other to a very high degree; in

particular, 73 out of 104 tokens of sara(h) occur with bagar. But this is

comparable to the fact that 14.5 percent of all tokens of \aas occur in the

presence of lamma or 54 percent of all tokens of fata occur in the presence of

\aas. Furthermore, when one considers the {keyword + collocate} complex, the 13

percent ranks between {fata + \aas} and {lamma \aas}. Idiomatic collocations

will rank higher than some nonidiomatic ones and lower than others.


The difference, that {lamma \aas} is defined as idiomatic while sarah (be) +

bagar is not, is an evaluative one, not a formal one.14 Numbers alone do not

identify idiomaticity or polysemy.

3.3. Discourse embeddedness and the literal vs. figurative contrast.

Still, the data suggests that Searle’s simple literal-figurative dichotomy, with

the figurative domain accounted for by a set of interpretative principles, does not

adequately reflect the reality that within the figurative domain, certain fixed

collocations are so established that in natural speech they are as numerous as

all literal usages combined. One conclusion that can be drawn from the com-

parison with nonidiomatic collocations is that whatever processing procedures

underlie literal collocations are equally the basis of the idiomatic collocations,

given that each involve high-frequency collocations. It is intuitively unlikely

that, as Searle would have it, a set of special principles intervenes in the compu-

tation of idiomaticity that is lacking in the computation of literal collocations.15

While the corpus data in sections 3.1 and 3.2 allows this inference to be

made only indirectly, data can in fact be found bearing on the question of con-

textualized identification of idiomaticity that definitively answers the question

against Searle. In Searle’s analysis, literal meanings are all there are to words

such as ‘pig’ in expressions such as (4) above. In a separate study (Owens and

Dodsworth 2015), we looked specifically at the properties of words with both a

literal and idiomatic meaning; \aas was among these. The basic research ques-

tion followed in that study was the same as that addressed here, namely, what

the nature of idioms is and what the contribution of the individual lexical and

grammatical elements to the idiomatic meaning is. As has been noted, in phono-

logical, morphological, and syntactic terms there is no difference between \aas

in its literal sense and in its idiomatic sense. Both, for instance, generally have

an emphatic \, though both can have the variants \aab and raas, and both have

a plural form \uýusse or \uusse. They are both syntactically flexible (see (8)

above). Furthermore, as seen in sections 3.1 and 3.2, there is no criterion based

on immediate collocational environment alone that distinguishes literal from

idiomatic meanings.

Against these identities, Owens and Dodsworth (2015) show that there is

one striking formal contrast between idiomatic and nonidiomatic meanings of

one and the same lexeme, such as \aas. This difference is manifested in the

discourse referential properties of the idiomatic and literal meaning of \aas. The

idiomatic meaning has a much reduced discourse exposure as compared to the

literal meanings, or as described by Owens and Dodsworth, it has a reduced

degree of discourse embeddedness or discourse visibility. What is meant by this

is that a token of a word with a figurative meaning in an idiomatic collocation is

less likely to be referred to in preceding or following discourse than is a token

with literal meaning. This property of idiomatic nouns is analogous to what

happens in processes such as compounding and noun incorporation; recall the

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work of Hopper and Thompson (1980, 1984), in which, for instance, the noun fox

in the compound fox-hunting is largely invisible to reference in discourse (note

the oddity of an utterance like !Our fox-hunting adventure wasn’t much fun

because we didn’t catch it).

In this section, I briefly summarize the results of Owen and Dodsworth

(2015), concentrating on the contrast between two key words already discussed

in this section, \aas and bagar. As is seen already in section 3.1 above, \aas has

both literal and idiomatic meaning; on the other hand, in our relatively large

corpus bagar has only literal meanings. Discourse visibility is measured by how

often the referent of a keyword–here, \aas or bagar–is referred to in preceding

or following discourse (see Owens, Dodsworth, and Kohn [2013] for a detailed

description of the basic measures used). As predicted, a literal meaning, as in

(1a), will have a higher degree of discourse embeddedness or visibility than will

a figurative or idiomatic meaning. This contrast holds irrespective of whether a

lexeme is only literal, as with bagar, or either literal or figurative, as with \aas.

Thus, in (1a) the pronoun ¤a on \aas¤a refers to the literal keyword, bagara. On

the other hand, it is expected that \aas in (15) would not have a referent in

following discourse, since it is part of the idiom {lamma \aas} ‘unite’, and this

expectation is borne out; in this sentence, only the masculine second person

plural pronoun is referentially continued in the following clause.

(15) tawwa lammee¤tu \aas¤ku ke haw famfam¤ku addal¤tú mi

formerly join-you.PL head-you.PL so and pump-your.PL repair-2PL.it not

axeer wa

better Q

‘Wouldn’t it have been better if you had united and repaired your pump?’ (TV45)

By contrast, in (16), in which \aas has a literal interpretation, it is referred to by

the pronoun object in the following clause.

(16) baal foog \aas waahid baal ley¤a

urinated on head one urinated on-it

‘He just urinated on a head, he urinated on it.’ (GR47)

Owens and Dodsworth (2015) compares a total of five keywords with idio-

matic and nonidiomatic meanings (\aas ‘head’, gakb ‘heart’ [see section 4.2.3

below], iid ‘hand’, ýeen ‘eye’, and ba:un ‘stomach’) with four words that only

have literal meanings (bagar ‘cattle’, qalla ‘grain’, ru:aana ‘foreign language’,

nugura ‘hole’) and measures the extent to which each keyword was referred to

in either previous or following context, using the same corpus as that described

at the end of section 2 (Owens and Hassan 2012). Here I reproduce only a com-

parison between the two words, \aas and bagar, that reflect the overall contrasts

between idiomatic and literal keywords. These two words have the frequencies

in the corpus shown in table 4.


Table 4. Frequency of Two Keywords

KEYWORD TOTAL TOKENS CORPUS % IDIOMATIC % NUMBER OF TEXTS

\aas ‘head’ 308 (247 idiomatic) 0.07725% 80% 65

bagar ‘cattle’533 (none idiomatic)0.22%0 %64

NOTE: corpus % = percentage of the entire corpus represented by tokens; idiomatic % =

percentage of tokens that are idiomatic; number of texts = how many individual texts

(out of a total of 94) the tokens occur in.

The key question here is whether idiomatic \aas differs in the degree to which it

is embedded in following discourse from nonliteral usages and, if so, in what

way. Table 5 gives the raw counts of tokens relevant to this point.

Table 5. Discourse Embeddedness, Literal vs. Idiomatic Tokens

IDIOMATIC \aas LITERAL \aas bagar (LITERAL)

Referent of keyword not referred

to in immediately adjacent clause 224 40 306

Referent of keyword referred 27 17 201

to in immediately adjacent clause

By inspection, the most obvious point is that bagar, which has only literal

usage in our corpus, has a far higher degree of discourse embeddedness than

does \aas in either idiomatic or literal guise. It is equally apparent, however,

that relative to the total tokens, literal usages of \aas are referred to far more

often in neighboring discourse than are idiomatic instances of \aas.16 The latter

are referred to in surrounding discourse in barely one token in ten. The three

values can be ranked as follows in terms of likelihood of reference in surround-

ing discourse: bagar > literal \aas > idiomatic \aas.

The contrasts set out in table 5 present strong empirical evidence against a

Searle-like literal-only analysis of the keyword. Whereas \aas in its idiomatic

and nonidiomatic senses is identical phonologically, morphologically, and in

terms of clause-internal syntax, there are measurable differences between the

two when the larger discourse context is considered. Here it becomes apparent

that there is, as it were, a literal \aas1 and an idiomatic \aas2, distinguished

from each other by the degree to which the noun can be referred to in the sur-

rounding discourse. Note that these differences are, in all likelihood, impossible

to discern with the introspective methodology used by Searle. They become ap-

parent only via quantitative analysis of natural speech. Comparing these results

to those discussed in sections 3.1 and 3.2, where occurrences of specific colloca-

tions were counted, equally shows that quantitative data alone does not shed

decisive light on the nature of idomaticity; how informative quantification is de-

pends on the specific linguistic questions to which it is addressed. Understand-

ing the cross-clausal behavior of collocations turns out to be crucial for a fuller

understanding of their nature.

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The discussion in this section leads in two directions. On the one hand, it

shows how important context is for discerning the nature of lexical-semantic

differentiation. On the other, it offers one piece of evidence in favor of the reality

of polysemy. While polysemy can, logically and methodologically, be explained

by pragmatic principles, the consistency with which literal and idiomatic mean-

ings of the same lexeme behave contrastively in discourse can be accounted for if

\aas minimally is polysemous as literal \aas1 and figurative or idiomatic \aas2.

4. Contexts. Section 3 concentrates on the relation between lexical collocates

in idioms and their role in discourse as it can be ascertained in natural corpora.

Lexemes in idioms, however, are sensitive to grammatical, semantic, and prag-

matic contextualization as well, as many who deal with semantics and cogni-

tive linguistics have emphasized, even researchers who do not assume that a

sufficient consideration of context will decisively tip the analytical balance

towards monosemy. Various types of context have been considered, including

that provided by derivational affixes (Tuggy 1993:277), syntactic constructions

(Dowty 2000), collocational information (e.g., Cruse 1986; Deane 1988:342;

Charles 1988; Miller and Leacock 2000; Dunbar 2001), and pragmatic infor-

mation (Cruse 2000). Riemer (2005:242—49), in the context of his explanation of

polysemy as metaphoric or metonymic extension, has an extended discussion of

the problems of determining in which parts of a clause the metaphor or meton-

ymy is to be located. In the framework of the current work, as already noted,

Allwood is one of the few who has at least suggested the role of context in sys-

tematically limiting polysemy.

In this section and section 5, I attempt to give concrete expression to the way

in which context interacts with lexical meaning in regard to polysemy. In the

present section I outline the basic contextual categories. An underlying idea is

that in important respects polysemy is adventitious upon familiar grammatical

categories, and that the many individual idiom types that define the polysemy

are in a significant number of cases grammatically in complementary distribu-

tion with one another.

4.1. Basic contextual categories. Three different types of contextualization

are exemplified below. The discussion shows that small grammatical, lexical,

and pragmatic differences can have vastly different effects on the interpretation

of idioms. The contextualization types can be divided into three broad kinds–

clause-internal (or frame-internal; see below), interclausal or interframe, and

pragmatic. Intraclausal contextualization defines the domain of what I term

“distributed polysemy,” which I turn to now.

4.2. Distributed polysemy. Distributed polysemy alludes to the fact that

contrasts bearing on the interpretation of polysemy are generally distributed

over more than one location in a grammatical clause or frame and that, intui-

tively, the nature of the clause plays a role in determining the interpretation

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of the idiom. This idea is implicit in some treatments of idioms. In particular,

Fellbaum (1993) examined in detail the role of the determiner in defining idiom

meaning, arguing that the behavior of a determiner in an idiom tracks its be-

havior in nonidiomatic usage. For instance, in the idiom he has an axe to grind,

the indefinite article a is appropriate because the meaning of the idiom is non-

compositional–‘has a grievance or ulterior motive’–and the idiomatic meaning

is nonspecific, licensing the use of nonspecific a.

However, Fellbaum’s well-documented article emphasizes the isomorphy

between idiomatic meanings and literal meanings, not the role of the determiner

in establishing contrasts among idioms themselves.17 Indeed, Fellbaum suggests

that “The literal equivalent of a noun in most idioms is somewhat vague and

admits of severally semantic similar interpretations . . . the exact meaning [of

axe] is not important, because the meaning of the idiom as a whole is not

dependent on such a fairly subtle difference” (1993:281). This follows a model of

keyword interpretation in idioms in which the idiomatic meaning of the keyword

noun is either allowed to be derived online, as with Searle, or one in which, as

with Glucksberg (1993, 2001:78), literal and abstract meanings coexist in pro-

cessing time. While agreeing with Fellbaum that idioms are sensitive to more

than the meaning of the noun keyword, I show here that once one begins dis-

secting larger clause-based dependencies in idioms, the meaning of the idiomatic

whole is indeed often dependent on very specific nonlexical functional elements

and contrasts.

For heuristic purposes, distributed polysemy is defined within the clause. It

is realized via basic functional categories which can simply be represented as

standard categories, subject, predicate, object, and so on, with the nominal argu-

ments bearing thematic roles, Agent, Theme, Source, Goal, Frequency, Manner,

and many more, and individual nouns defined by inherent features of number

and gender (in Arabic), and various syntactic relations such as definiteness.

The clause is also a domain for relations of anaphora. As a terminological note,

I sometimes refer below to the clausal domain of distributed polysemy as a

“frame.”18

As far as this discussion of polysemy goes, there are two key aspects of

frames relevant to delimiting polysemy. One pertains to anaphora and exo-

phora, which below is termed simply “anaphora,”19 the other to what might be

termed grammatical and lexicorepresentational elements.

4.2.1. Anaphora and agreement. Anaphora and agreement pertain to the

relations of anaphora within the clause itself. In Arabic, the identity of the

subject is marked morphologically on the verb itself through the categories per-

son, number, and gender, these agreeing elements being analysed as pronominal

elements with anaphoric values (e.g., Owens, Dodsworth, and Rockwood 2009;

Owens, Dodsworth, and Kohn 2013). A number of idioms are minimally distin-

guished by the nature of the anaphoric relations between referring expressions


in the clause. For instance, the idiomatic structure {ligi \aas¤PSSR} (get head-

PSSR) requires the verb ligi and the object \aas, and the latter must be in a

possessed relation. The possessor of \aas must be human (as a noun token or by

reference, if pronominal). This is illustrated in (17a)—(19b). All involve differ-

ential interpretations based on what broadly can be thought of as differences of

reference and anaphor.20

(17a) lig¤at \aas¤hum

get-F head-their

‘She got their support.’

(17b) lig¤at \aas an¤naas

get-F head DEF-people

‘She got the people’s support.’

(18) ligi \aas¤a

get head-his

‘He escaped.’

(19a) lig¤at \aas¤ha

get-F head-her

‘She gave birth.’

(19b) ligii¤na \aas¤na

got-we head-our

‘We (female speakers) gave birth.’

In each case a difference of meaning correlates with a difference in the gram-

matical properties of each idiom. The differences within the common structure

can be represented as in (20a)—(20c).

(20a) ligi1 \aas-possessor2 (in (17a) and (17b))

(20b) ligi1 \aas-possessor1 (in (18))

(20c) lig¤at1F \aas-possessor1F (in (19a) and (19b))

In structure (20a), the possessor’s reference must be disjoint from that of the

subject. The possessor can be either a pronoun, as in (17a), or a noun, as in (17b).

In structure (20b), the possessor must be coreferential with the subject, so it

must be a pronoun cross-referencing the subject. Herein lies the fundamental

difference between (17a) and (17b), on the one hand, and (18)—(19b), on the

other. In (19a) and (19b), too, the possessor must cross-reference the subject, but

in addition, the subject and the possessor that coreferences it must be feminine.

The cross-reference can be speech-situational in the case of a first person sub-

ject; (19b) implies that the speakers are female.


These examples indicate that how raas is bound referentially in the clause

fundamentally constrains its interpretation. Two classes of examples can be

distinguished here. In the first class, features of the subject itself, and accom-

panying cross-referentiality in the possessor pronoun, delimit the possible inter-

pretation of the utterance, as in (19a) and (19b). For the meaning ‘give birth’,

the subject must be feminine–either overtly marked as such, or so interpret-

able.21 Choice of gender is not free in this case. In the second class, the choice of

subject is free, but whether or not there is cross-referentiality between subject

and possessive pronoun of raas induces a basic difference in meaning; this is

seen in the contrast between (17a) and (17b), on the one hand, versus (18)—

(19b), on the other.

Summarizing the cases exemplified here, one and the same basic lexical

collocation, {ligi raas¤PSSR}, participates in three distinct idioms, each defined

by subtle grammatical and referential properties. These correlations between

meaning and structure are summarized in (21).

(21) Coreferentiality between subject and possessor of \aas: meaning outcomes

1. Subject and possessor are not coreferential: ‘support’

2. Subject and possessor are coreferential:

a. Subject is not feminine: only ‘escape’

b. Subject is feminine: ‘give birth’

It can be noted in this context that of the three categories listed here, by far

the most general one in defining contrastive idioms is that of coreferentiality

between subject and noun possessor, i.e., cases 1 and 2a in (21).

4.2.2. Grammatical and lexicorepresentational factors. The grammatical

basis of the frame is defined by traditional grammatical categories such as

definiteness and number, by grammatical functions such as subject and object,

and by what can be termed lexicorepresentational factors such as choice of

lexemes and their semantic values, including their thematic values within the

clause. As both Fellbaum (1993) and Nunberg, Sag, and Wasow (1994) empha-

size, idiomatic structure is adventitious on nonidiomatic and hence the non-

idiomatic structure serves as a starting point. The clausal frame as relevant to

idioms begins with a basic, literal meaning built around a verbal predicate. As

above, the verb šaal ‘carry’ is used for illustration in the following discussion.

The basic grammatical and lexicorepresentational elements of the frame for

šaal ‘carry’ can be characterized as in (22).

(22) basic frame for šaal

Nature of event: pick up and keep (for one’s benefit; see (23) below for elaboration)

Agent = subject: NP, usually human

Patient = object: NP, usually tangible object

Source: PP

Goal: PP


The agentive subject is normally human. A look at the first two hundred of

the 1,006 tokens of šaal in the corpus shows that 180 (90 percent) have a human

subject. The subject can also be a being or object with inherent motive force–for

instance, a cow carries individuals, as do cars and trucks. In a few cases it is an

abstract entity; for example, hukuuma ‘government’, with which šaal is under-

stood as ‘appointing’ an individual. I discuss these and other types of arguments

below. The object is semantically and grammatically unconstrained. It can be

either singular or plural, be a single discrete object or a collection (see section 4.3

for the contrasting case of lamma ‘join’). Like all verbs, šaal occurs with various

adjuncts (noncore thematic roles)–time, reason, etc. In addition, it occurs with

a specific Source-Goal complement, min . . . le ‘from . . . to’. These do not figure in

the discussion below, though there are idioms that utilize them, e.g., an idiom

that indicates the linear extent of territory by specifying its endpoints, as in (23).

(23) šiil¤a min hine wadd¤a le baama

carry-it from here send-it to Bama

‘It lies between here and Bama.’ (lit., ‘Carry it [i.e., the hypothetical line of distance]

from here and send it to Bama.’)

A key aspect of šaal is its inherent semantics. Basically, it indicates a com-

posite action of picking up an object, carrying it, and either keeping it or dispos-

ing of it on one’s own behalf (if the subject is human); the latter is seen in (24).

(24) al¤ma\a šaal¤at al¤\aaba le s¤suug

DEF-woman carry-F DEF-sour milk to DEF-market

‘The woman carried the sour milk to the market.’

Here šaal implies that the woman prepared the milk, carried it to the market,

and sold it on her own behalf. Selling is implied by ‘market’, and that it is for her

own benefit is implied by the verb šaal. A contrasting meaning is produced by

the verb axad ‘take’, which in the same sentence (al¤ma\a axadat . . .) would

suggest that the sour milk which the woman took to the market was not her

own.

Given the basic frame of šaal, it is clear that there are various ways that it

does not account for the idiomatic usages exemplified in (1b)—(1g). In (1f) and

(1g), the object is an Experiencer, not a tangible object. In (1b), the subject is

ostensibly a physical object, though one of a specific, idiomatic type, as discussed

below. One could approach the discrepancy between basic frame and idiomatic

meanings in (1b)—(1g) in two ways. On the one hand, one could assume that (22)

is in fact the only frame for šaal, and account for the idiomatic meanings via

metaphoric extension. This is essentially the approach taken by Goossens (2002:

364) in his analysis of idioms such as ‘catch someone’s ear’. In his analysis, ‘ear’

undergoes metonymic extension, ‘attention’, and the entire phrase is given a

metaphoric interpretation ‘get someone’s ear’. On this basis, \aas in (1g) would


have a metonymic value, such as ‘intelligence, opinion’, and a metaphoric image

would be formed of someone’s word appropriating it. This approach can be

termed the “metaphor processing approach,” since the meaning, in line with

Searle’s description given in the discussion of (3)—(5) in section 1.1 above, is

derived via reference to a contextualized, online re-interpretation of the literal

meaning.

While this treatment has the advantage of keeping a simple frame for šaal,

it misses the fact that šaal in its idiomatic usage undergoes a number of sys-

tematic transformations (using the term neutrally) of the basic frame, even if it

maintains a number of its key elements. These transformations include the

following.

The key features are that idiomatic šaal often represents a change of state,

as in (1b)—(1c), rather than a change of location as in (23) and (24). The subject is

frequently a motive force of some sort, as in (1b), and frequently is inanimate

(e.g., a government), while the object tends to be an Experiencer, as in (1f)—(1g).

In some cases, it is the subject that assumes the role of Experiencer, as in (1e).

On the other hand, the durativity of the action and the subject ending up in

control of the event described by šaal are maintained across literal and idiomatic

meanings. The relation between literal and idiomatic šaal can be represented as

in table 6.

Table 6. Transformation of Idiomatic šaal

BASIC šaal IDIOMATIC šaal

durative (no change)

subject in control of event (no change)

change of location ® change of state

subject = Agent ® subject = Experiencer

Agent = human ® Agent/Experiencer = motive force

object = tangible object ® object = Experiencer/Patient

NOTE: The arrow symbol (®) means “transformed into”; all idioms do not undergo each

of these transformations.

These transformations are pervasive in idiomatic uses of šaal. I assume that

idiomatic šaal, the šaal with “transformed” meaning, is a different šaal from

literal šaal. That is, rather than adopt Goossens’s “metaphorical processing

approach,” I assume that šaal itself is polysemous. I take up these this point in

greater detail in section 5. Here, I briefly analyze the six {šaal \aas} idioms of

(1b)—(1g) (the examples are repeated below for convenience as (25a—(25d), (27a),

and (28b)).

The four idioms in (25a)—(25d) have \aas as Patient.

(25a) šaal ar¤\aas

carried DEF-head

‘He took the lead.’ / ‘He headed the column.’


(25b) al¤kalaam šaal \uusse katiir¤aat

DEF-word carried heads many-PL

‘The issue had a number of ramifications.’ / ‘The issue became complicated.’

(25c) šuqul šaal \aas¤í

something carried head-my

‘Something distracted me.’

(25d) kalaam¤ak šaal \aas¤í



The distinctive characteristics of each of these idioms are as follows. In (25a),

the Patient-object \aas is marked by the definite article. In (25b) and (25d), the

Agent-subject is propositional, rather than human. Example (25d) could be

paraphrased as (26).

(26) al¤inta gul¤t¤a šaal \aas¤i

REL-you said-you-it carried head-my


In (25c) and (25d), the object \aas must be possessed, usually by a possessive

pronoun. Here \aas is an Experiencer. In (25b), \aas must be an indefinite noun,

can be plural, and is typically modified by an adjective, as in the example. The

Agent in this case is propositional, similar to (25d). One could paraphrase (25b)

in a way parallel to (26), with ruusse katiiraat as object.

Note that (25c) is distinguished from (25d) merely by the nature of the

subject. If the subject is propositional, the appropriate translation in English is

‘convince’. If it is not, and if it is an arbitrary sound, an unspecified matter, it is

‘distract’.

The two {šaal \aas} idioms in (27a) and (27b) have \aas as subject.

(27a) \aas¤a bi¤šiil al¤gœ\á ajala

head-his 3-carry DEF-study quickly


(27b) \aas¤a šaayil kalaam

head-his carrying word

‘He has problems.’

In (27a), the patient must be, broadly speaking, propositional. In this pattern,

\aas represents an Experiencer. Example (27b) may be expressed without an

object–the head is carrying something, but this thing need not be stated. This

example is doubly durative. The verb šaal itself is durative, as seen above, and

the active participle form of the verb also has a durative function in Nigerian

Arabic, as indeed in virtually all varieties of Arabic (Yavrumyan and Owens


2007). In both of these, again, the idiomatic meaning mirrors the durative mean-

ing of šaal itself.

The six idioms obviously are not distinctive in their basic lexical makeup;

the {šaal \aas} collocation is at the core of each. Instead, differentiation is

achieved via various grammatical and lexical properties. Word order and,

attendant upon this, grammatical relation are factors; idioms are differentiated

according to whether \aas occurs as subject, as in (27a) and (27b), or as object, as

in (25c) and (25d) (in either case it is an Experiencer). The lexical identity of the

subject may be distinctive; idioms are differentiated according to whether the

item that occurs as subject is propositional or not ((25c) vs. (25d)), and whether it

is human or not. Morphosyntactic form can differentiate idioms; whether \aas is

definite (as in (25a)), indefinite (as in (25b)), or possessed (as in (25c) and (25d))

are all factors defining particular idioms.

It is clear, then, that the different meanings that {šaal \aas} is associated

with are distributed across different grammatical parts of the transformed

frame and pertain to various aspects of them. It is seen that the polysemy of this

collocation, too, is distributed.

Here it can be asked in what sense the precise definition of the frame speci-

ficities of each idiom helps to constrain the polysemy of \aas. In many cases,

contrasting individual examples makes it clear that this does occur. For in-

stance, apparent differences in meaning may be due solely to the nature of the

subject, as with (25c) vs. (25d). In both cases, the basic cognitive capacity attri-

buted to the Experiencer is determined by the subject. If the subject is proposi-

tional subject, the Experiencer is ‘convinced’; if the subject denotes a random

sound, the Experiencer is ‘distracted’. In contrast to the analogous treatment of

Tuggy (see (6)), I would not consider (25c) and (25d) to represent distinct idioms;

or, to put the matter in lexical terms, I would not consider that the contrast

between (25c) and (25d) involves different meanings of \aas and šaal. The larger

clausal frame defines a lexical complementarity wherein the different meanings

are defined.

Such a precise characterization of the frame does not generally lead to a

complete elimination of polysemy, however. Knowing that \aas as Patient in

(25a) must have a definite article does not obviously lead to the meaning that

(25a) has, even if it probably does in some way limit the interpretations of the

sentence. The fact that (25a) is not possessed, for instance, will lead one to look

for a referent outside of a person’s cognitive state (see section 5.1.1). Further-

more, the definite article points in the direction, potentially, of a unique entity.

Distributed polysemy, therefore, covers a range of contextualization factors,

some of them very specific, others constraining but not determinative.

4.2.3. \aas vs. gakb, ‘head’ vs. ‘heart’, object vs. subject. An interesting

variant on the correlation between grammatical function and idiomatic keyword

requires a separate subsection. As noted in section 3, while \aas is probably the


idiomatic keyword with the largest number of tokens in the corpus, others are

important as well, including gakb ‘heart’. One striking difference between \aas

and gakb pertains simply to their syntactic distribution. Whereas gakb strongly

tends to occur in subject position, \aas is, as it were, an object idiom. Table 7

shows the basic frequencies with the expected frequencies of each syntactic

function in order to highlight where the significant differences lie.

It is clear that \aas is overrepresented as an object (37 percent), whereas

gakb is overrepresented as a subject (52.4 percent). In fact, the relative fre-

quency of \aas as object is, in a sense, higher than it appears in table 5. Under

the category “possessor” appear nineteen tokens where \aas is the object in a

verb-plus-object construction that is nominalized (see n. 12), and therefore

appears as the possessor of the verbal noun. For example, compare, to the

ordinary clause in (28a), the nominalized expression in (28b), where the object

\aas is the possessor of the verbal noun lamamaan.

Table 7. Syntactic Position: \aas vs. gakb\aas gakb

BASIC EXPECTED BASIC EXPECTED

FREQUENCY FREQUENCY FREQUENCY FREQUENCY

subject 65 88.9 53 29.1

topic 6 4.5 0 1.5

predicate 3 2.3 0 0.7

object 116 97.1 13 31.9

object of preposition 78 76.1 23 24.9

possessor 35 35.4 12 11.6

fragment 1 0.8 0 0.2

abu 4 3.0 0 1.0

Total 308 101

(28a) lamma = verb, \aas = object

tawwa lammee¤tu \aas¤ku

formerly join-you.PL head-you.PL

‘Formerly you united.’ (TV45)

(28b) ýaarf¤iin lamam¤aan a\¤\aas

know-PL joining-VN DEF-head

‘They know about unifying.’ (IM20)

There are nineteen such nominalizations, and adding these to the 116 object

tokens would bring the total of \aas as object to 135 (44 percent)–nearly half of

all tokens of \aas, both literal and idiomatic. There is something in the idiomatic

nature of \aas and gakb that predisposes them to occur in these two positions, or

to phrase the matter in contextual terms, the context provided by the subject

position favors gakb, whereas object position favors \aas. In particular, two main

meanings of idiomatic \aas relevant to this discussion are proposed in section

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"Fragment" designates a raas or galb token which occurs in a construction which is not a complete clause. Abu 'having' is the construction "abu X adjective", e.g. abu galb-an sabiib 'having a soft heart'. The expected frequency shows what token count for a given cell is expected if the overall distribution was purely chance. It shows at a glance, for instance, that the observed raas tokens in subject position are considerably underrepresented against what a chance distribution expects and by the same token that galb in subject position is well overrepresented against a chance distribution. Expected frequencies are calculated by summing the observed column and row frequencies (CT = column total, RT = row total), then calculating, (RT)(CT)/total observations. For instance, the expected frequency of raas in subject position is calculated as follows. 65 + 53 = 118 (RT of observed raas and galb tokens in subject position) 308 = CT of raas 409 = total observed tokens of raas + galb (308 + 101) (308)(118)/409 = 88.86

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OBSERVED

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OBSERVED


5.1.1 below: representing the individual as an agentive force to the outside

world, and representing the cognitive center where the world is processed. These

two meanings are predominantly associated with occurrence in the object posi-

tion. For \aas to represent the individual as an agentive force to the outside

world generally requires two entities in a clause. The first, identified by the

subject, is the entity to whom the individual is projecting himself or herself (in

(28a), this is ¤tu). The second is an entity representing what is projected, the

image of self, represented by \aas. This is a Patient, prototypically in object

position. In the case of \aas as cognitive center, \aas is an Experiencer, and here

as well the Experiencer is typically an object. Shifting an object to the role of

Experiencer, in fact, is one of the transformations noted in table 6 that idiomatic

šaal implies.

Discussing the idiomaticity of gakb in detail is outside the scope of the

current article. For present purposes, gakb represents the initiator of an action,

and the initiator, in Arabic, typically occurs in subject position.22 Alternatively,

gakb represents the state an individual is in, and here as well it occurs in the

subject position of a stative clause. Examples (29a)—(29c) exemplify the point.

(29a) ana gakb¤i xaram min il¤xidime hiil naas¤na

me heart-my leave from DEF-work of people-our

‘I lost interest in working for our people.’ (lit., ‘my heart left from the work’) (J 5)

(29b) šuqul al¤gakb¤ak raad¤a

thing RC-heart-your wanted-it

‘what you wanted’ (lit., ‘the thing that your heart wants’) (IM08)

(29c) qaadi baýiid da gakb¤ak raagid

there far DT heart-your resting

‘There far away you are at ease.’ (GR 139)

These observations do not, of course, rule out the possibility that \aas (or

gakb) in these constructions can be moved out of the canonical object (subject)

position. Table 5, however, shows that object is the unmarked position for idio-

matic \aas.

Subject and object each provide a different context for the idiomatic usages

of \aas and gakb. The level of contexualizing generality in this case is extremely

broad. Very programmatically it can be represented as in (30).

(30) Typical functions, ‘head’ vs. ‘heart’

object: Patient/Experiencer (= \aas)

subject: Initiator/State-In (= gakb)

The point here is not only that idiomatic \aas is contextualized into object posi-

tion because of its typical Patient or Experiencer role, while idiomatic gakb is

contextualized as subject because of its Initiator or State-In role. It is equally

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7


that the functions object and subject are part of broad contrastive frames which

support the general semantic properties of \aas and gakb and highlight their

contrastive meanings.

4.3. Interframe factors. The previous section shows that the overall struc-

ture of a frame affects the way in which idioms are conventionally determined.

While the idiomatic meaning utilizes the basic grammatical structure of a frame

(pace Fellbaum), individual, nonlexical elements can play a crucial, contrastive

role. In this section, I expand this latter perspective by comparing different

frames, with the view towards determining the extent to which the basic frames

themselves can be said to determine the meaning of the idioms.

First, it is shown that the nature of the lexemes in a frame give important

clues as to idiomatic meaning (section 4.3.1); second, it is seen that there are

general idiomatic markers that give important clues as to idiomatic meaning.

4.3.1. Contexts and lexical frame: frame determinism? To a naïve out-

sider it might appear that which collocation produces which idiomatic meaning

is arbitrary. Why should (31) not mean ‘he convinced them’ (e.g., ‘he gathered uptheir ideas’), or alternatively, why should {šaal \aas} in (32) not mean ‘unite’?

(31) lamma \aas¤hum

gather head-their

‘He united them.’

(32) šaal \aas¤í

carry head-my

‘It convinced me.’ / ‘It distracted me.’

In this case, a closer look at the basic frames of the two verbs allows one to

discern why (32) is not a good fit for the meaning of (31); whereas literal šaal

places no restrictions on the type of Patient (object) it takes, lamma requires a

mass or a plural NP, as in (33a)—(33c). A singular object is allowed only if the

object is represented as accumulated, as in (33d); a simple singular object, as in

(33e), is odd.

(33a) lamm¤o al¤kaare

gather-they DEF-load

‘They gathered up the load.’

(33b) lamm¤o al¤bagar

gather-they DEF-cattle

‘They rounded up the cattle.’

(33c) lamm¤o al¤hibaan

gather-they DEF-ropes

‘They gathered up the ropes.’

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functional categories, subject and object, are a further contextualizing factor.


(33d) lamm¤o hebíl wara hebíl

gather-they rope after rope

‘They gathered up one rope after another.’

(33e) !lamm¤o hebil¤í

gather-they rope-my

(!‘They gathered my rope’)

For {lamma \aas} to acquire the meaning of ‘convince’ it would require an

extension of its basic lexical frame, since ‘convince’ freely allows a singular

object, as in (32). Such an extension is certainly not an impossibility. As seen in

the previous section, unusually, {šaal \aas} idioms often have inanimate

agentive subjects or even Experiencer subjects. However, šaal is, in this sense,

better suited to the task, since it lacks this particular constraint, as is seen in

(34a) and (34b).

(34a) šaal¤o al¤hebíl

carry-they DEF-rope

‘They carried the rope.’

(34b) šaal¤o al¤hibaan

carry-they DEF-ropes

‘They carried the ropes.’

While it might appear that a “frame determinism” is at work in steering the

{lamma \aas} idioms away from the meaning ‘convince’, frame determinism can-

not be applied in an automatic manner.23 When one considers idioms with the

structure {ligi \aas}, encountered in (17a)—(19b) above, one finds that ligi, like

šaal, places no obvious restrictions on its object. In this case, however, the pro-

perties of the subject are contrastive. Whereas šaal can take a propositional

subject, ligi cannot, as is seen in the contrast of (35a) with (35b), even though

one way a politician can get someone’s support is through his or her words. On

the other hand, a human Agent with šaal would only be fully acceptable if the

literal meaning were intended, as is seen in the contrast of (36a) with (36b).

(35a) !al¤kalaam ligi \aas¤i

DEF-word got head-my

(Cannot be used for ‘What he said convinced me.’)

(35b) al¤kalaam šaal \aas¤í

DEF-word carried head-my

‘The matter convinced me.’

(36a) al¤politišan ligi \aas¤i

DEF-politician got head-my

‘The politician got my support.’


(36b) !al¤politišan šaal \aas¤i

DEF-politician carried head-my

(Cannot be used for ‘The politician convinced me.’)

In these cases, there are no frame-contrastive elements that explain these

differences other than the contrastive semantic features of the subject, which

combines with the collocations to form the given meanings: {ligi \aas} ‘support’

requires that the subject be human; {šaal \aas} ‘convince’ requires that the sub-

ject be propositional. Moreover, as noted above, having a propositional subject is

not the normal statistical tendency of šaal. As it were, not only is the collocation

{šaal \aas} idiomatic, but the type of subject that the idiomatic collocation allows

is itself grammatically idiomatic. In the final analysis, then, one is left in a by

now familiar situation: context is contrastive, but generalizing across different

frame-defined contexts problematic.

4.3.2. Interframe collocational paradigms. A second type of frame deter-

mination is seen when the collocates of a given keyword (for present purposes, of

\aas) themselves occur in a series of idioms, contributing a generalizable mean-

ing to the idioms they occur in. This establishes what can be called an inter-

frame regularity, where the frames are linked by the collocate. Collocates of this

sort come particularly from polar adjectives, the best exemplification being the

pair xafiif ‘light’ and tagiil ‘heavy’. Generally speaking, xafiif indicates a ten-

dency to overstep an implicit boundary, often socially defined, whereas tagiil

indicates the opposite; some examples are shown in (37a)—(41b).

(37a) iid¤a xafiif¤e

hand-his light-F

‘He steals.’

(37b) iid¤a tagiil¤e

hand-his heavy-F

‘He doesn’t steal.’

(38a) qašim¤a xafiif

mouth-his light

‘He is talkative.’

(38b) qašim¤a tagiil

mouth-his heavy

‘He is tight-lipped, does not give away secrets.’

(39) \aas¤a xafiif

head-his light

‘He is light-headed.’ / ‘He is inebriated.’ (See (42) below.)


(40a) gakb¤a xafiif

heart-his light

‘He is a copycat.’

(40b) gakb¤a tagiil

heart-his heavy

‘He is stubborn.’ / ‘He is not influenced by others.’

(41a) jild¤a xafiif

body-his light

‘He is active.’

(41b) jild¤a tagiil

body-his heavy

‘He is lethargic.’

To the extent that xafiif and tagiil consistently introduce the idea of staying

outside of or within a boundary, respectively, their contribution to the meaning

of the idiom is contextually regular, a semantic classifier as it were.

The proviso “to the extent that” is necessary, since in fact xafiif and tagiil

are not always straightforwardly associated with these boundary-related mean-

ings. In particular, in the case of the main keyword of this article, tagiil gives the

meaning seen in (42), reasonable in view of the basic meaning of tagiil, but not

necessarily an obvious opposite of (39).

(42) \aas¤a tagiil

head-his heavy

‘He is dumb.’

4.4. Pragmatics of culture. A final type of contextualization is pragmatic or

speech-situational. The relevance of the speech situation was already discussed

briefly for (19b) above. It is also relevant for (19a). Normally, (19a) would be

interpreted as glossed in the example (‘she gave birth’). However, if it is known

that the referent is either an underaged girl or a postmenopausal woman, then it

would be interpreted in the same way as (18) (i.e., as ‘she escaped’). Note that

this pragmatically effect on interpretation of this example is limited to one of the

two interpretations ‘give birth’ and ‘escape’.

4.5. Summary. Above, three broad ways are described in which different

idiomatic meanings of \aas correlate with differences in grammatical, lexical,

and pragmatic properties of the idiomatic collocations and their larger syntactic

and pragmatic environment. These systematic differences for a single keyword

potentially provide support for Allwood’s (2013) emphasis on the predictive role

of context, and therefore, potentially, for a monosemist perspective.

Two contrasting idealized views can be taken as to how predictive the con-

textual factors discussed here are. On the one hand, a given factor may actually

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of sorts


reduce what are ostensibly different idioms to a single type. A prime example

here concerns (18) versus (19a) and (19b). On encountering the contrast, I as-

sumed that these represented separate idioms, until, during a talk at the Uni-

versity of Maiduguri, it was pointed out that in northeastern Nigeria, as indeed

in neighboring regions, to give birth is to escape a dangerous situation. Child-

birth is the prototypical escape from danger of a female. Only women can give

birth, and Arabic distinguishes grammatically between masculine and feminine.

Thus, despite the quite different equivalents of these two expressions in Eng-

lish translation, it is reasonable to assume that only a single idiom is involved,

whose apparently different interpretations is controlled grammatically (by gen-

der agreement) and pragmatically. A similar issue arises in the discussion relat-

ing to (25c) and (25d); the difference between ‘convince’ and ‘distract’, deriving

from šaal raas, depends on the lexical nature of the subject.

On the other hand, only in a minority of the cases discussed can two appar-

ently distinct idioms plausibly be reduced to one. Moreover, such reductionism

very quickly runs up against a basic fact: the collocations themselves are arbi-

trarily given. That idioms generally speaking are explicable on a post hoc basis,

but are not predictable in advance, is a truism in research on idioms (Nunberg,

Sag, and Wasow 1994:497). There is no a priori reason why {ligi \aas} should

mean ‘gain support of, escape, give birth’, rather than, say ‘capture, hire’ (cf.

‘headhunters’ in both cases), ‘brainwash’, or ‘get orientated, come to, get one’s

head back’.24 Indeed, there is no nonhistorical a priori reason (in contrast to his-

torical reasons; see n. 9) why the individual lexemes ligi and raas should be used

at all to induce the meanings they have in Nigerian Arabic–why, for instance,

‘get support of’ should not be expressed by šaal raasa (cf. (25c)).25 A reading of

šaal raas as ‘gain support’ would be very much in keeping with the use of šaal

for cases of acquiring and maintaining an abstract attribute. Ultimately, idioms

have the same arbitrariness as do individual words, with the important proviso

that a further element of arbitrariness intrudes in the need to specify which

collocates are necessary to produce the arbitrarily given meaning.

However, there is also a large in-between area where it is intuitively appeal-

ing to see context at work in circumscribing idiom meaning, even if one cannot

generalize the constraining factors linguistically or determine the idiom mean-

ing on the basis of these factors alone. In one of the relatively few works that

addresses the linguistic peculiarities of idioms, Glucksberg (2001:83—86) asks

what factors constrain their flexibility, emphasizing semantic and pragmatic

factors. He silently and swiftly kicked the bucket (where kicked the bucket is

interpreted as ‘died’) is acceptable, but he sharply kicked the bucket is not

because die sharply is uninterpretable. The present section argues for a broader

perspective. When the internal grammar of idiomatic clauses is contrasted with

that of related idioms or with different idiomatic keywords, in many cases the

meanings of idioms are either constrained or determined by specific gramma-

tical, referential, and contrastively paradigmatic elements. If section 3.3 argued


for the polysemous reality of idiomatic keywords, this section cautions that

ostensible lexical polysemy is far from being boundless.

5. A contextualized attribute extension sense taxonomy for idioms.

Section 4 shows that in some cases contextual factors can be invoked that plau-

sibly explain away seemingly polysemous meanings of \aas. At the same time,

that section suggests that only a minority of ostensible semantic contrasts can

be accounted for without polysemy. Context in the majority of cases is of limiting

or constraining character. It is the task of this section to introduce a representa-

tional model of polysemy that gives due recognition to factors that might place

constraints on it. I continue to use \aas for exemplification below, incorporating

the analytical concepts discussed thus far, as well as further ones discussed in

the present section. To this end, sections 5.1 and 5.2 develop what can be termed

a contextualized attribute extension sense taxonomy of \aas. The taxonomy has

two aspects. On the one hand, main semantic components of \aas are proposed,

which derive from inherent properties of \aas itself. The nature of these pro-

perties is discussed briefly in section 5.1.1. On the other hand, the polysemy of

idiomatic \aas does not exist independently of the collocates that are constitu-

tive of the idioms themselves nor of the contexts in which it occurs (sections 5.1.2

and 5.1.3).

I should emphasize that the task in the rest of this section is not to solve the

intractable issue of how many lexemes of the shape \aas there are, but rather to

offer a systematic framework for addressing the issue.26

5.1. An account of idiomatic \aas. The taxonomy has three basic com-

ponents: a contextualization component, discussed in section 4, the stipulation

of collocations, and a hierarchicalized taxonomy based on the idea of attribute

extension. Attribute extension is discussed in section 5.1.1; I then turn to collo-

cations and related issues in 5.1.2, and then in 5.1.3 bring all of the elements

together in a single representation of idiomaticity.

5.1.1. An attribute extension taxonomy for idiomatic \aas. The idea of

attribute extension is based on the work of two different traditions. One is the

work of Riemer (2005), introduced briefly in section 1.1, and the other, that of

Glucksberg and his associates. I introduce the issue with Riemer, but develop

this section mainly on the basis of Glucksberg, returning to Riemer in section

5.2.

Riemer develops a theory of lexical polysemy based on the idea of metaphor-

ical and metonymic extensions. Analyzing the Warlpiri verb pakarni, Riemer

begins with a basic meaning of ‘hit’ or ‘hit with an object such as a hand’. He

terms this a “prototypical centre” (2005:327) or a “core meaning” (2005:345).

Warlpiri pakarni has a number of further meanings, including ‘kill’, ‘pierce’,

‘paint’, and ‘perform dance ceremony’. Each of these meanings is derived via


metaphor or metonymy. The meanings ‘kill’ and ‘perform a dance’, for instance,

are both seen as effect metonymies–‘kill’ being a causal metonymy from hit-

ting, and ‘perform a dance ceremony’ based on the action of hitting feet or

instruments against the ground. Although these further meanings are derived

via metaphoric or metonymic extension, Riemer considers them conventional-

ized in the pakarni lexeme, i.e., they are no less a part of its meaning than is

‘hit’.27

Given the idea that figurative meanings are derived from properties of lexi-

cal items themselves, it is but a short step to the work of Glucksberg and his

colleagues. In the course of a long debate with proponents of conceptual meta-

phor, Glucksberg developed the idea of property attribution to explain how

metaphors work. The concept of attribute extension as used here borrows loose-

ly from the idea of property attribution as developed in psycholinguistic work

(Cacciari and Tabossi 1988; Glucksberg, Brown, and McGlone 1993; Glucksberg

and McGlone 1997, 1999; McGlone 2007; Haser 2005:42). As McGlone (1996:457)

explains, the metaphoricity of Our marriage was a rollercoaster ride is inter-

preted as matching the marriage with the properties that typify a rollercoaster

ride–exciting, full of ups and downs, or scary, for instance. One of these proper-

ties is attributed to marriage.

In the attribute extension taxonomy, it is experiential properties of \aas on

which the main figurative senses proposed are based. The perception of where it

sits on the body, and its physical shape, for instance, is the basis of examples

(43a)—(46) below, whereas its cognitive control function is paramount in (47)—

(50). In each case, an inherent, figurative attribute of \aas is singled out and

forms the basis of attracting a large range of the collocates with which \aas

forms the idioms. Properties of \aas are not “matched with” and “attributed to,”

but rather “extended out of.” This manner of understanding the abstract exten-

sions of \aas tallies well with Riemer’s (2005) treatment of lexical polysemy, as

discussed above. Given a “core meaning” or “prototypical center” for a lexeme,

figurative meanings can be derived based on metonymic and metaphorical attri-

butes which inhere in, or are interpreted experientially to accompany, the core

meaning.

The contextualized attribute extension taxonomy of \aas begins with the

basic distinction between literal and abstract (idiomatic) and proceeds to group

the sixty-odd meanings under one of four general categories. The grouping is

intuitive, but is implicitly based on metonymic-metaphorical extensions that in-

here in the properties of \aas itself. As is briefly discussed in 5.2 below, it is

probably impossible to decide for each proposed taxonomic parameter whether

its basis is metaphoric or metonymic or a mixture of the two.

Some extensions are based on \aas as denoting a prominent (physical) struc-

ture. In idioms of this sort, \aas combines with various open-ended collocate

classes to represent the top, headlike part of an object. Examples are seen in

(43a) and (43b).


(43a) \aas al¤qalla/duxun

head DEF-grain/millet

‘tassel of grain/millet’

(43b) \aas al¤beet/kuuzi/watiir

head DEF-house/hut/car

‘roof of the house/hut/car’

In these examples, the prominence is in a class of physical objects–in (43a), any

grain that sends out a headlike tassel, and in (43b), a relatively flat object that

covers an extensive area attached underneath it.

The idea of prominence has an abstract interpretation as well, where it

combines with propositional and “conjunctive metonymic” (Dirven 2002) collo-

cates, as in (44).

(44) \aas al¤madrasa/xidime/hiraata

head DEF-school/word/farming

‘the topic/essence of school/work/farming’

In this first set of collocations, \aas stands in a part-whole relationship to the

collocate. It can have the sense of prominent part in an absolute sense as well, as

in (45) and (46).

(45) mine akal \aas

who ate head

‘Who won?’

(46) šiil ar¤\aas (= (25a))

carry DEF-head

‘Take the lead.’

Here \aas represents implicitly what is the first or front of something, without a

possessor noun making explicit what this entity is.

Before moving on, it should be emphasized that \aas in the senses described

thus far does not merely translate as ‘top’ or ‘on top of’ (equivalent to foog ‘on’),

nor can its idiomatic senses can be understood independently of its open-ended

collocates. This point can be underscored with the following two examples.

First, \aas takes the sense of ‘tassel’, as in (43a), only if the tassel itself has

a headlike appearance. Millet (duxun) and guinea corn (tambuuna, ajaqama–

various types), the two staples of farming in northeast Nigeria, fulfill this de-

scription. Corn (maize = mabir), on the other hand, does not. The tassels of

corn hang down on the sides, and are designated ganduul (cf. Classical Arabic

qanduul ‘aspalathus, type of gorselike flower’).28 Corn does not have a \aas.

For the second, a \aas at¤tœraab ‘head of the soil’ is a headman over a rela-

tively large area of land. He might be a traditional district (lawaan) or province


(ajá) head, for instance. In addition, the term can be applied if someone is the

owner, and therefore has control over, farms or other extensive holdings. One

can speak of a \aas az¤zerýaat ‘head of the farms’ in this case. It would not be

appropriate to apply this term to the owner of a single house, however, no mat-

ter how big it is, nor to the owner of single farm, hence it is not possible to say

*\aas al¤beet29 or *\aas az¤zerý. In short, the meaning of \aas is finely calibrated

with the nature of its collocates.

As seen in many examples discussed thus far, \aas also collocates with

various lexemes, mostly verbs and adjectives, to induce various abstract mean-

ings. In these idioms, \aas derives from the basic function of a head as housing

the brain, which is the psychological, intellectual, and sensory center of an in-

dividual. Without the head the individual has no cognitive capacity, and without

the basic functions of the head the individual has no ability to project himself

or herself or to interact with the outside world. This, then, gives two basic

perspectives about Nigerian Arabic \aas. It can represent the cognitive state of

an individual, as in (47)—(50), or it can represent an agentive individual to the

outside world, as in (51)—(54). Further examples are found in the appendix.

(47) ka\ab¤ni fi \aas¤a

hold-me in head-his

‘He remembered me.’

(48) \aas¤a xafiif (= 36)

head-his light

‘He is light-headed.’ / ‘He is careless.’

(49) fatee¤na lo¤hum \aas¤hum

open-we for-them head-their

‘We enlightened them.’

(50) kalaam¤a šaal raas¤í (= 24d)


‘He convinced me.’

(51) na¤lumm \aas¤na

we-gather head-our

‘We unite.’

(52) ka\ab¤na \aas¤hum min ad¤duwaas

hold-we head-their from DEF-fight

‘We kept them out of the conflict.’

(53) ligii¤na raas¤hum

got-we head-their

‘We got their support.’

maiduguri

Cross-Out

maiduguri

Inserted Text

9

maiduguri

Cross-Out

maiduguri

Inserted Text

5


(54) bi¤tallif \aas¤a

3-spoil head-his

‘He makes a fool of himself.’

The senses discussed here can be represented by the hierarchical taxonomy

in (55).

(55) attribute extension sense taxonomy for \aas

Literal ‘head’ : (1a)

Figurative

1. Prominent part

(a) Part-whole

(i) Physical: (1e)—(1f), (43a)—(43b)

(ii) Abstract: (44)

(b) Whole: (45), (46)

2. Psychological/intellectual/sensory capacity of the individual (abbreviated to

“cognitive and individual center”)

(a) represents the cognitive state of an individual: (47)—(50)

(b) represents an agentive individual: (51)—(54)

The taxonomy represents a basic split at the literal-abstract interface.

Essentially this makes the claim that literal and abstract meanings are different

submeanings, that polysemy begins, as it were, at the literal-abstract divide. A

different representation would be that shown in (56).

(56) literal \aas > abstract \aas

Prominent part

Cognitive center

etc.

The representation in (56) essentially follows Searle’s extralexemic postulate of

a literal vs. a metaphoric or figurative meaning, with the figurative meaning

always derived online from the literal. In section 3.3, empirical evidence is pre-

sented arguing for the categorical difference of literal and figurative meanings,

hence of (55) over (56).

5.1.2. Collocational stipulation and semantic mapping. A basic property

of the polysemy of \aas is that a differentiated meaning can be discerned only in

the context of a further collocate. What is termed a “collocational stipulation” is

a part of the representation of the collocation. This has a distributional and a

semantic aspect. Distributionally, the collocates are defined according to a fixed

parameter. The open-ended collocates, as seen above, constitute a set defined by

a certain characteristic–tassels of a certain shape, for instance. The fixed collo-

cates are unique lexemes. These latter collocates themselves typically have a

sense hierarchy with literal and figurative senses, with the figurative sense

again defined only against its collocation with certain lexemes. As a provisional


illustration the familiar verb šaal ‘carry’ can be used. This verb is itself regis-

tered in the database with twenty-six separate ostensible idioms, including

those in (1b)—(1g).30 It may well be that closer consideration of the meanings of

these idioms will justify a finer hierarchicalized sense taxonomy for šaal, similar

to that for \aas in (55). However, since motivating such a taxonomy is outside

the scope of this article, I simply represent the figurative meanings of šaal by

copying over the transformations from literal to abstract as discussed in table 6

above; this is shown in (57).

(57) (abbreviated) attribute extension sense taxonomy, šaal

Literal: ‘carry’, durative, subject control

Figurative

change of location ® change of state

subject = Agent ® subject = Experiencer

agent = human ® Agent/Experiencer = motive force

object = tangible object ® object = Experiencer/Patient

The collocational stipulation is relevant only to produce a meaningful idiom. For

instance, axad \aashum ‘he took their head’ is a possible collocation, but it does

not need to be stipulated since the collocation of verb plus object that underlies it

would be created by general rule, and the literal meaning that results would be

computed by whatever process underlies the interpretation of verbs and objects.

The sense ‘convince’, as in šaal \aashum ‘he carried their head, i.e., he con-

vinced them’, on the other hand, requires a stipulation of the particular collo-

cation. In the framework developed here, the lexemes that enter into the idiom

can be said to be noncompositional vis-à-vis a literal reading of their constitu-

ents, but they are semicompositional against the figurative meanings of their

stipulated collocates, as defined by contextualized attribute extension sense tax-

onomies like those of (55) and (57). The idioms access a specific part of the

taxonomy (e.g., \aas in (1b) has specifically the meaning ‘cognitive state’), but

this only limits the meaning of the idiom without predicting the precise meaning

(hence “semicompositional” above).

The collocational stipulation is associated with what I term a “semantic

mapping” (Owens and Dodsworth 2015). Typically the idioms are paraphrasable

with a single word. Example (1b), for instance {\aas šaal}, repeated as (58a), can

be paraphrased by (58b).

(58a) \aas¤a bi¤šiil al¤gœ\á ajala

head-his 3-carry DEF-lesson quickly


(58b) bi¤lýallam al¤gœ\á ajala

3-learn DEF-lesson quickly



In the paraphrase, bilýallam is equivalent to idiomatic \aas bišiil. For present

purposes, the term “semantic mapping” can be thought of as an equivalence

between the idiomatic collocation and a single lexical item. Example (59)

represents the mapping for (58a) and (58b), where the dotted line represents a

semantic relationship.

(59)

Note that semantic mapping as conceived of here provides a representation for

the phenomenon described in section 3.3, whereby idiomatic nouns (such as \aas

in (59)) are invisible to discourse in the way literal nouns are not. They are so

because, as parts of idioms, they are incorporated into a semantic whole, which

preempts the visibility of the single lexeme \aas to discourse.31

5.1.3. Contextualized attribute extension sense taxonomy. The final

component of the representation of the \aas-based idioms are the clausally

based frame properties discussed in section 4.2 as distributed polysemy. As seen

there, it is not only the choice of the key collocational lexemes that determines

the interpretation of idioms, but also various clause-internal anaphoric and

grammatical relations, as well as the semantic identity of different arguments in

the clause. A consideration of all the idiom factors described here leads to the

following three basic elements:

• the postulated attribute extension sense taxonomies;

• an arbitrary, though essential link to a collocate or an open-ended class of

collocates with which the idiom is constituted, the collocation stipulation,

and related semantic mapping;

• the specifics of the grammatical frame that characterizes the collocation,

“contextualization.”

The meaning of the idiom is located in the interaction of these three attributes.

A skeletal fragment of what information a more complete contextualized

attribute extension sense taxonomy might look like is given in (60), incorpo-

rating all three basic attributes. The scheme in (60) should be read as an illus-

tration of what information will be found in the contextualized attribute exten-

sion sense taxonomy, not as an optimal formal representation of the information

that is found in it. In line with the exposition in sections 4.1 and 4.2, frame

elements, given within slashes, are associated with individual idioms. Clearly,

generalizations of various kinds would need to be built into the representa-

tion–generalizations that potentially would filter some of the frame informa-

tion given into higher order components of an as yet unspecified nature.32 It

should also be clear that only frame-specific elements that are essential for


uniquely defining an idiom are incorporated in the contextualized attribute ex-

tension sense taxonomy.33

(60) contextualized attribute extension sense taxonomy for \aas (based on (55))

…

Figurative meaning

1. Prominent part [collocational stipulation: line 1(b) in the Figurative part of (55),

Figurative part of (57); \aas: collocates with figurative šaal ‘take the lead’]

/Agent: human, \aas = Patient, \aas = definite/

…

2. Psychological/intellectual/sensory capacity of the individual:

a. represents the cognitive state of an individual

[collocational stipulation: line 2(b) in the Figurative part of (55), Figurative

part of (57); \aas: collocates with figurative šaal ‘convince’]

/Agent: propositional, \aas = Patient, \aas¤PSSR and disjoint with PSSR

of Agent …/

…

b. represents an agentive individual to the world

[collocational stipulation: \aas collocates with lamma ‘unite’ ]

/\aas ¤PSSR; PSSR = plural/

…

The question can be posed whether one needs a sense taxonomy at all.

Instead it might be claimed that all one needs to do is to specify cooccurrence

restrictions on the collocates–that \aas, for instance, can collocate with types of

grain that have flowers that form headlike tassels, that it collocates with

lamma, and so on. This information needs to be stated anyway, since the basis of

the differentiated sense taxonomy as given here is the differing collocates

implied in each idiom. To consider this perspective in adequate detail would

again take one into the large domain of the motivation of idioms in terms of

metonymy and metaphor, a domain too large for discussion here (though see 5.2

below). Instead, two basic points can be made. First, this suggestion further

implies that collocations can be precisely enough characterized without regard

to meaning, i.e., in terms of cooccurrences as ascertained in a corpus–that

meaning can, as it were, be dispensed with. In response to this, section 3 above

shows that at this stage in the study of Nigerian Arabic, at least, not enough

data is available to seriously motivate this approach.

Second, reducing the issue to mere cooccurrence patterns devoid of meaning

determination implies doing away with the literal-figurative contrast that is the

basis of the sense taxonomy. Innocuous though this second consideration may

seem, it has implications for the contextualized attribute extension sense taxon-

omy in general. In the spirit of Searle, the assumption that \aas is basically

polysemous, that it has a literal and a figurative sense, entails exploring the

many facets of figurativeness. This involves, inter alia, layers intermediate

between individual idioms and the most general “figurative” level, ‘prominent

part’ and ‘cognitive and individual center’ being two such. The current repre-

sentation should be understood as a classifying heuristic, commensurate with

maiduguri

Cross-Out

maiduguri

Inserted Text

a


the data, and in principle verifiable via psycholinguistic testing, further work

with corpora, and more input from native speakers.

5.2. Nature of contextualized attribute extension sense taxonomy. It is

relevant to briefly consider what the basis of the divisions in the contextualized

attribute extension sense taxonomy are–what is the basis of generalizing major

abstract categories? With Riemer (2005), one can start with the familiar cate-

gories of metonymy and metaphor. As noted in section 1, Riemer’s analysis

recalls that of Allwood (2003), except that it develops a precise mechanism of

polysemic extension. Riemer recognizes a basic meaning of lexemes and, as

already explained above, accounts for polysemy via metaphorical or metonymic

extensions.

From Riemer’s perspective, as a straightforward taxonomic exercise, one

could probably say that the ‘prominent part’ set of meanings for \aas (line 1 in

the “Figurative” part of the taxonomy in (55)) are metaphoric. The tassel of

grain is similar to the head of a person or animal. The ‘cognitive center’ meaning

(line 2(a) in the “Figurative” part of (55)) is metonymic, representing what might

be termed a “category-and-property metonymy” (Radden and Kövecses 2007:

344)–the head is the part of the body that controls attitudes, actions, and cogni-

tive states in general, and \aas is representative of these properties. “Repre-

sentation of” in the sense of “substitution for” is a typical sort of metonymy

(Warren 1999, 2002).

In its uses representing an agentive individual (2(b) in the “Figurative” part

of the taxonomy in (55)), \aas appears at first sight to be metonymic. It is con-

sidered here to represent an individual to the outside world; that implies a part-

whole relation, whereby the head stands for the entire individual–a typical

form of metonymy. However, matters are complicated by the fact that the proto-

typical “representational” meaning of \aas in Nigerian Arabic is that where \aas

is used as a reflexive pronoun (Owens 2014:146), as in (61) (see also (9) above).

(61) šif \aas¤í

saw.I head-my

‘I saw myself.’

While reflexive \aas and \aas in the sense of representing the individual

are probably related, the latter, idiomatic sense as described here must be some-

thing more than a part of the body representing a whole individual. Reflexive

\aas already does this. If the two cases are distinguished by taking idiomatic

\aas to represent the individual to the world, as an active agent, how does the

addendum “as an active agent” fit into the simple classification of a mean-

ing as metonymic or metaphoric? “Active agent” is here understood more exact-

ly as “in the capacity of an active agent; in active-agentive terms,” even “like

an active agent.”34 These interpretations, however, slide into a metaphorical


understanding of this third major sense category of \aas, so that a conclusion

that \aas in this sense is both metonymic and metaphoric is hard to escape.

While the difficulty of drawing a distinction between metonymy and meta-

phor has been discussed in many places, it is sometimes thought that a distinc-

tion for any given figure can be made, even if one invokes the idea of scalar

values, some figures being more metonymic and less metaphorical than others,

or vice versa (e.g., Barcelona 2002a, 2002b; Dirven 2002; Riemer 2005:186).

Other scholars, however, either question the possibility or the efficacy of consist-

ently drawing a distinction at all (Barnden 2010), or argue that definitional

criteria for the distinction that have been offered yield ambiguous classifications

at best (Haser 2005: chapter 2), or simply suggest that precise definitions are not

crucial to a discussion of figurative language (Ritchie 2006:11). Given both the

challenge of defining a given Nigerian Arabic idiom as metonymic or meta-

phoric, and the general issue of distinguishing between the two, the current ap-

proach, which accounts for figurative meanings in terms of property extension,

avoids the necessity of developing an extensive taxonomy of figurative language

and applying it to the large database examined here.35

6. Conclusion. In this section, I highlight four points, summarizing what is

said above, and pointing to avenues of future research.

To begin with, it may be asked whether idioms in fact deserve special atten-

tion. Sinclair (2004) is one who considers all language idiomatic. From this per-

spective, presumably different collocational possibilities of idioms differ only in

degree, not in kind, from collocations in general.36 Section 3 of the present article

provides evidence that idioms should indeed be distinguished from other colloca-

tions. Although, when one looks simply at collocational frequencies, idioms are

indeed no different from literal collocations (sections 3.1—3.2), the behavior of

idiomatic nouns in discourse reveals them to be different from literal nouns,

even those with which they share the same phonological, morphological, and

syntactic entry. More generally, along with a collocational stipulation–idioms

exist only in specific collocations (section 5.1.2)–idioms are associated with a

specific semantic mapping. It can be suggested here that idioms do deserve spe-

cial linguistic study, and that they merit recognition as a discrete category, less

constrained than derivation, compounding, and noun incorporation, but more

constrained than literal collocations.

Introducing the idea of constraints leads to the second point and to the core

issues discussed in this article, including the role of polysemy in the constituent

idiomatic lexemes. The perspective argued for here is that the limits of polysemy

should be seen not as absolute boundaries, but rather in terms of the multiple

factors that work to constrain an ostensibly limitless polysemy. A major task of

the article is to define grammatical parameters that are relevant in this regard.

This leads into a third point, namely, how these factors are best represented.

Certainly there is much room for discussion. I limit myself here to one point. It


could be argued that the hierarchicalized attribute extension sense taxonomy is

inadequate in two directions. On the one hand, it might be claimed that it is not

finely enough differentiated to account for all of the sixty-some ostensible \aas

idioms (nor even for the thirty or forty that might result if they could be reduced

further, as argued in the discussion of (25c) and (25d) towards the end of section

4.2.2). This problem is implicit in the term “semicompositional” introduced in

section 5.1.2. On the other, it could be said that such taxonomies force binary

cuts to be made even in cases where items in different branches might have

common properties (an inherent problem in a branching taxonomy). As far as

the first problem goes, what can be said here is that further experimentation is

needed to test the degree to which finer taxonomic distinctions are rewarded

with a higher degree of figurative compositionality. The objection cannot be

answered in the abstract. As to the second problem, it is an easy enough matter

to allow for cross-cutting connections. However, unless these are well motivated,

they potentially add a high degree of arbitrariness to the hierarchy itself. In

both cases, the major goal of the contextualized hierarchicalized attribute exten-

sion sense taxonomy outlined in (60) is to define three differentiated domains

that need to be recognized for a closer understanding of idioms: inherent senses

of the collocates, clausally based constraining factors, and arbitrary idiomatic

stipulation. How to do this is an ongoing issue.

Finally it is interesting simply to reflect on what studies such as the current

one mean for understanding figurative language in general. There have, of

course, been a number of studies concentrating on comparative metaphorical

language. However, in recent years, these generally assume a Cognitive Lin-

guistic perspective in which figurative language is not treated in terms of

idiomaticity as such, but rather as a reflex of conceptual metaphors (e.g., the

collections in Sharifian et al. [2008] and Maalej and Yu [2011]).37 The perspec-

tive pursued here, however, is that idiomaticity can itself be treated as an

independent domain. This allows comparative questions to be asked that can

probably only be answered using comparable detailed, corpus-based databases

such as the one that serves the current study. It is striking, for instance, that so

much idiomaticity should be loaded into a limited number of keywords. Nigerian

Arabic might be termed a šaal ‘carry’ language, not an axad ‘take’ language (see

the discussion of šaal vs. axad for (24) above). Looked at merely in terms of

semantic mapping, in terms of the meanings of the individual idioms, this might

appear to risk semantic overload on šaal or \aas or ligi ‘get’. Idioms, however, as

explained in detail in section 4, are more than lexical collocations. A single

idiomatic lexical collocation can be remarkably efficient in, to speak metaphor-

ically again, building upon basic grammatical structures to define a range of

conventionalized meanings. A comparative perspective that looks beyond the

lexical idiomatic collocates will do justice to the intricacy of the issue.


Appendix

The lexeme \aas is a rich source of idiom in Nigerian Arabic. Over sixty ostensible

idioms have been recorded. A large sample of these is presented below, arranged

according to the contextualized attribute extension sense taxonomy in (60). The iden-

tifying codes from the database have been left intact.

Prominent Part

4.46 ka\abat \aasha ‘she plaited her hair’, lit., ‘she held her hair’

4.47 boko haraam ka\ab \aas maiduguri ‘Boko Haram has occupied Maiduguri’, lit.,

‘Boko Haram held the head of Maiduguri’

4.48 mine Warab \aas ‘who won’, lit., ‘who hit head’

4.51 šiil ar¤\aas ‘take the lead’, lit., ‘carry the head’

4.52 mine akal \aas ‘who won’, lit., ‘who ate head’

Psychological/Intellectual/Sensory State of the Individual (Or Cognitive and

Individual Center)

REPRESENTS A COGNITIVE STATE OF AN INDIVIDUAL

4.05 karabni fi \aasa ‘he remembered me’, lit., ‘he held me in his head’

4.06 \aasa heelu ‘he is smart’, lit., ‘his head is sweet’

4.10 \aasa xafiif ‘he is light-headed/careless’, lit., ‘his head is light’

4.12 \aasa tagiil ‘he is stubborn’, lit., ‘his head is heavy’

4.15 fateena lohum \aashum ‘we enlightened them’, lit., ‘we opened them their heads’

4.18 Warabo leena \aasna ‘they disturbed us’, lit., ‘they hit our heads for us’

4.24 \aasa gawi ‘he is stubborn’, lit., ‘his head is hard’

4.25 \aashum ja ‘they came to their senses’, lit., ‘their head came’

4.54 \aasa bišiil al gœrá ajala ‘he learns quickly’, lit., ‘his head carries studies quickly’

4.53 \aasa yaabis ‘he is stubborn’, lit., ‘his head is dry’

4.59 katiiriin millabbidiin \aashum ‘many do not reveal themselves’, lit., ‘many

conceal their heads’

4.69 \aasa šaayil ‘he has problems’, lit., ‘his head is carrying’

REPRESENTS AGENTIVE INDIVIDUAL

4.01 nalumm \aasna ‘we unite’, lit., ‘we gather our head’

4.03 ka\abna \aasna min ad-duwaas ‘we kept out of the conflict’, lit., ‘we held our head

from the conflict’

4.04 nuku\ub \aasna ‘we are proud’, lit., ‘we hold our head’

4.08 bitallif \aasa ‘he makes a fool of himself’, lit., ‘he spoils his head’

4.11 \aasna waahid ‘we are united’, lit., ‘our head is one’

4.19. ma bidalli \aasa le naadum ‘he doesn’t submit to anyone’, lit., ‘he doesn’t lower

his head to a person’

4.21 bixadim foog \aasa ‘he works for himself, independently’, lit., ‘he works on his

head’

4.26 ligi \aashum ‘he got their support’, lit., ‘he got their head’

4.32 kalaama bidangir \aasak ‘you will submit to them’, lit., ‘his word bends down

your head’

4.37 hu naadum \aasa ‘he is independent’, lit., ‘he is a person of his head’

4.39 ligiina \aasna ‘we escaped’, lit., ‘we got our head’

4.43 xarrabo \aasna ‘they made us flee’, lit., ‘they destroyed our head’

4.62 al¤bitt sanadat \aasa leehum ‘the girl competes with them’, lit., ‘the girl supports

her head towards them’


1. The phonetic realization of the lexeme varies between raas, \aas, or \aab, as seen

in some of the examples below; in (1c), it appears in its plural form. Low-level phonetic

variation such as this is speaker- and context-dependent. A close linguistic definition of

it would require a variationist treatment.

2. The logical test can be used to demonstrate a systematic contrast between literal

and abstract or idiomatic meanings, and hence an ambiguity in the lexeme \aas. The

borderline between polysemy and vagueness discussed in Tuggy’s (1993) article, on the

other hand, is subject to various factors, including those discussed in detail in section 4.

Arguably, one might want to assimilate what I interpret below as context-sensitive, con-

ditioned contrasts to cases of vagueness. The issue, however, requires an explicit treat-

ment that is not developed in the present article.

3. While Searle dealt ostensibly with metaphor, he does suggest (1980:108) that his

stock example, Sally is a block of ice, approaches a fixed expression–in his words, a

“dead metaphor,” i.e., an idiom.

A glance at the British National Corpus yields eleven tokens of the phrase block of

ice. Of these, seven are literal meanings, three are figurative, plus one that I am unable

to classify. Of the figurative meanings, one is simply ‘(a body) become cold’ (turn into a

block of ice), and two are close to the meaning of Searle’s example, e.g., “the cold effec-

tiveness of a block of ice applied to her nervous system,” i.e., made her become unfeeling.

Note that in general the problems that Searle raises in interpreting Sally is a block of ice

could be equally shown to be problematic for the idioms discussed in this article. For

instance, the difficulty of interpreting raas al¤qalla, lit., ‘head of the grain’ as ‘tassel’

(see (7), (43a)), as opposed to simply ‘top of the grain’, is comparable to the difficulty of

discerning which characteristic of a block of ice is relevant for interpreting Sally is a

block of ice.

4. In their discussion of over, Brugmann and Lakoff (1988:300) do distinguish

between a “minimal specification,” which they do not develop, and a “full specification”

approach. In the full specification approach, a high degree of polysemy is represented by

image schemas for over. In Lakoff (1987:378) there are said to be over one hundred

different senses for over. A minimal specification approach would presumably give

greater weight to contextual factors.

5. It is important not to paint all monosemist approaches with the same brush.

Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, for instance, rather contentiously writes, “However, where-

as the radical monosemy position defends an abstract, minimal semantic representation

for a decontextualized general sense from which polysemic instances are derived by

Notes

Acknowledgments. I would like to thank Robin Dodsworth for comments on an

earlier draft of this article as well as Jidda Hassan, Sherif Abdulahi, Ibrahim Adamu,

and Kellu Ibrahim for their persistent support in the research on Nigerian Arabic.

Research has been supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) under

grant OW 5/5-1/3, “Idiomaticity and Lexical Realignment in Nigerian Arabic.”

Transcription. IPA symbols are used, except that : represents a voiced emphatic

implosive, j a voiced alveopalatal affricate, š a voiceless alveopalatal fricative, and y a

palatal glide. The source of examples drawn from texts is placed in parentheses after the

translation.

Abbreviations. The following grammatical abbreviations are used in glosses and

elsewhere: 3 = third person; DEF = definite; DT =_______; F = feminine; LIN = linker; M =

masculine; NP = noun phrase; O = object; PL, pl. = plural; PP = prepositional phrase; PSSR

= possessor; PSV = passive; Q = question marker; RC = relative clause; REL = relative; S =

subject; SG, sg. = singular; V = verb; VN = verbal noun. Other abbreviations: ! = semantic

or pragmatic anomaly; NA = Nigerian Arabic.

maiduguri

Inserted Text

demonstrative


contextual (pragmatic) constraints, Cognitive Linguistics tends to defend the view that

polysemic senses of one lexical item form interrelated sets” (2010:153). As seen, Searle

accounts for polysemy via interpretive principles that are only partly pragmatic in

nature, Allwood places as much emphasis on linguistic as on pragmatic context, and

Riemer’s core meaning, discussed in this section, is expanded by rules of metonymy and

metaphor, not pragmatics. Riemer, it can be added, is neutral as to whether these deriva-

tions support a monosemic or polysemic approach.

6. The appeal to extralinguistic context is developed elsewhere among monosemists.

Jannsen (2003:101), working within a cognitive linguistics framework, argues, for in-

stance, that translationally distinct utterances in Dutch reflect a single meaning when

looked at in terms of inference from our worldly knowledge about walking sticks.

7. I leave out of the discussion Taylor’s (2006) somewhat radical proposal of devolv-

ing the monosemy-polysemy debate to what can be termed a “radical usage” approach:

“speakers understand these expressions [such as open a book and open your eyes] because

they have learned them as such” (2006:75). Taylor here, it would appear, is arguing

against interpretation via lexical compositionality. A basic problem in this approach is to

ascertain what it is that speakers have learned in these expressions. In particular, how

have they learned two different meanings for open your eyes, one (in the traditional

terminology) the compositional sense (doctor to patient: you can open your eyes) and the

other the idiomatic ‘look reality in the face’? This is the question addressed in section 5 of

this article.

8. Whether there are three-member fixed idioms in Nigerian Arabic is a question

outside the scope of this article.

9. Arabs reached the Lake Chad area by 1400, having come originally from Upper

Egypt. Hence they are a well-established part of the social and cultural environment in

the region (see articles in Owens 1994). They constitute one of the largest minority

groups in the region which, since before their arrival in the region, has been dominated

by a Kanuri-speaking majority. Nigerian Arabic idiomaticity is to a very large degree

based on borrowing from Kanuri (Owens 2014).

10. I would like to thank Bernhard Volz, Lars Ackermann, and Lutz Lukas of the

Applied Computer Science Faculty, Bayreuth University, for building a morphological

segmenter (Ackermann et al. forthcoming) to expedite searching and creating a con-

cordance for the corpus.

11. For instance, for {lamma + \aas}, 47 out of the 308 total tokens of \aas in the

corpus, and 47 out of the 461 total tokens of lamma, appear in this idiom; (47+47)/

(308+461) = 94/769 = 0.122 (or 12.2%), the denominator 769 being the sum of the total

number of tokens of both lamma and \aas in the corpus.

12. These numbers include variant forms of elements of the idioms. For instance,

lamma in the idiom {lamma raas} ‘unite’ has a number of different morphological forms;

those that appear in this database include lamma (perfect and imperfect verb), allamma

‘be joined’ (form VII in Arabic derivational terms), lamlam, reduplicated verb form ‘unite

repeatedly’, laamm (active participle), malamm ‘a gathering’ (note, not ‘place of gather-

ing’ as in Egyptian Arabic), and lammiin ‘uniting’ (verbal noun). Furthermore, I have

included among the figures for {fata raas} its dialectal or idiolectal variant {kaša(h) \aas}

(same meaning), which occurs in five of the thirty-four tokens.

13. No tokens of the active participle saari(h) happen to occur in the texts. See

Owens (2007b) on the variable value of the final laryngeal in sara(h) and fata(h).

14. This needs to be qualified slightly, however. There are two tokens of the

imperfect isœra in the sense ‘climb up, wind about’, applied only to climbing plants.

Beans climb up sticks, poles, etc., as in al¤libiya bisra fœ \aasa ‘the beans climb up its top’

(GR 132). The etymology needs interpretation. Probably it is a metaphoric extension of

sarah ‘pasture’. Pasturing cattle involves a circuitous search for water and grass, like


the circuitous climbing of beans and other such plants. These two tokens have been left

out of the count.

15. Moreover, anticipating the discussion in section 4.2 below, the comparison

indicates that in terms of collocational propensities, literal and idiomatic expressions

begin on the same basis. It underscores the fact that what makes idiomaticity is

idiosyncratic.

16. The chi-square value of 66.6 (df 2) is significant (p > .000). More relevant obser-

vationally is the cline of differences between observed and expected values. Idiomatic

\aas expects a far higher degree of continued reference in a following clause, and bagar

expects a lower value, with literal \aas falling within its expected range. A more detailed

and comprehensive multivariate analysis is provided by Owens and Dodsworth (2015).

17. A further perspective that gives prominence to the grammatical clausal pro-

perties of idioms is Nunberg, Sag, and Wasow (1994). They use their observations to

argue for the compositionality of idioms, not to define the role of grammatical elements in

defining different idioms.

18. Thematic roles are an integral part of the frame construct in FrameNet (http://

framenet.icsi.berkeley.edu/fndrupal/home), based on the work of Fillmore and others on

Frame Semantics (e.g., Fillmore 1982). In this approach, frames are defined at different

levels of generality, with lower-order frames inheriting frame attributes from higher-

level ones. Frames are realized in individual lexical units, which are said to “evoke” the

frame they instantiate. Each lexical unit that instantiates a frame has the attributes of

that frame. The frame for “Bringing” describes a certain type of event and is realized by

such verb as carry, bring, and fetch. While FrameNet is in principle language-neutral, it

effectively is applicable only if there are adequate resources (individuals, time) able to

define the various levels and inheritance relations between them, which is not the case

with Nigerian Arabic; hence no attempt is made to adapt it to the current data.

19. Anaphora in a narrower sense covers reference relations of referring expressions

to other referring expressions within a clause and a larger discourse context, while exo-

phora is situational-based, language-external reference. Exophora pertains in particular

to first and second person reference, only rarely to third person (Prince 1981:232). I am

aware of no studies on spoken Arabic that highlight the properties of anaphoric vs.

exophoric elements, though exophora is recognized as an independent factor group in the

discourse studies by Owens and collaborators (e.g., Owens, Dodsworth, and Kohn 2013).

In these studies, situationally given pronouns show no special discourse properties

against other referring expressions, relative to the parameters used to define reference

within discourse.

20. Subject-verb agreement is counted here as anaphoric. Nigerian Arabic being a

pro-drop language, (Owens, Dodsworth, and Kohn 2013) a verbal clause more often than

not has no overt subject, the person-number-gender inflection on the verb being the main

indicator of what the subject is. This marker is therefore referential-anaphoric.

21. That is, not ligo raashum ‘they (masculine) escaped’ (they.M got head-their.M).

22. Cf., for instance, the metaphor for “subject” in the Classical Arabic linguistic

tradition, faaýil ‘agent’.

23. A further perspective pointed out by an anonymous reader is that a literal

meaning of lammo \aas¤hum might be impossible due to the fact that idiomatic \aas is in

the singular. This requires further investigation with consultants. There are contexts

where morphologically singular, literal nouns can have a plural reading, e.g., waas¤o

wataayir¤hum al¤katiir¤aat ‘they repaired their many cars’ (wataayir ‘cars (pl.)’) vs.

waaso watiir¤hum al¤katiiraat ‘they repaired their many cars one by one’ (watiir ‘car

(sg.)’). Still, the overwhelming predominance of singular nouns in most idioms

considered here is potentially a further aspect of distributed polysemy.

24. Cf. raasa ja ‘his head came’, i.e., ‘he got orientated’.

maiduguri

Highlight

voiced pharyngeal fricative (other way around),


25. Lest one suppose that the difficulty of construing ‘get head’ as ‘escape’ or ‘give

birth’ is merely due to the attempt to understand Nigerian Arabic from a Western

perspective, a large sample of these idioms was presented to speakers of Egyptian

Arabic, who were equally perplexed by most of them (Owens 1996, 2014). These native

Egyptian intuitions are confirmed in a corpus of about 480,000 words which derives from

two sources. One is a part of the LDC (Linguistic Data Consortium Call Home series). A

second consists of the considerable corpus collected over many years by the doyens of

Arabic dialectology, Manfred Woidich and Peter Behnstedt. They were so kind as to

make available all of Behnstedt and Woidich (1987, 1988) in electronic format, as well as

Woidich’s extensive material from the data on Farafira, Bahariyya, and Dakhla oases, in

addition to material from Cairene Arabic. This corpus represents varieties from all over

Egypt. The corpus reveals no tokens of liýi/ligi + \aas (dimaag, etc.) collocations among

the 320 (including 128 idiomatic) tokens of \aas (or dimaag).26. One basic point missing in a foundational discussion of the monosemy-polysemy

divide and the ability to systematically represent semantic description at all (Croft 1998;

Sandra 1998; Tuggy 1999) is the practical, behavioral reality of language contact, bilin-

gualism, and second language learning. If one cannot collocate \aas correctly, as de-

scribed here, and, very probably, if one is not aware of the underlying collocational fre-

quencies attendant upon \aas, one cannot know Nigerian Arabic. This has behavioral

consequences. If one does not know {lamma \aas} ‘unite’ one cannot effectively express

this concept to a monolingual Nigerian Arab (of which there are not a few).

Admittedly, this observation does not logically entail that the monosemy-polysemy

issue must be confronted, but it does effectively force that issue on a practical level, in

that the learning of which collocations with \aas are conventional correlates with

learning the idiom itself, i.e., its meaning. What does one learn: collocations, idioms as a

whole, abstract meanings? And if abstract meanings, which ones, and how are they

structured?

27. See Geeraerts (1997:68—79) for related discussion of the historical development

of lexical senses in terms of subsets. Robert (2008:74—79) similarly describes the develop-

ment of opaque subsenses from originally motivated metonymic or metaphoric associa-

tions. For the psycholinguistic tradition, see Glucksberg and McGlone (1999:1543).

28. In Ibn Man£—ur’s compendious Lisaan al-ýArab dictionary from the thirteenth

century (11:570), a qandal, with variants qundaal and qandawiil (where q corresponds

to NA g) is described as a camel, or a person with a large (Waxm) head, or a long-necked

person. Taking this meaning at its face value, this would imply that NA ganduul (assum-

ing that it has the same etymological root) in the sense of ‘tassel of corn’ (i.e., long and

flowing) would derive from ‘having an appearance like that of a long neck’, i.e., it would

owe its historical etymology to the same metaphoric association as \aas al¤qalla, a

comparison to the physical part of a person or animal.

29. Except, of course, in the different sense of ‘roof’ in this case.

30. With (25c) and (25d) registered as one idiom.

31. In fact, there are idioms such as {lamma \aas} ‘unite’ that do not map onto

discrete lexemes in Nigerian Arabic, i.e., there is no single verb meaning ‘unite’ in the

dialect. The mapping, rather, is to a postulated semantic space that may, as with {bišiil

\aas} = bilýallam, also be accessed by a single lexeme, but need not be.

32. For instance, the parameter of coreference of a possessive pronoun with the

subject (conjoint or disjoint) is crucial for many idioms, and conceivably is subject to

cross-idiom generalization.

33. The meaning given is the meaning of the idiom. The complete taxonomy has

three parts. It begins with the hierarchicalized attribute extension sense taxonomy, as

described in 5.1.1. For šaal reference is to the provisional Figurative part of (57). The

“collocational stipulations” in square brackets “[. . .]” specify what lexemes need to be

maiduguri

Highlight

voiced pharyngeal fricative (other way around),


chosen to make the successful idiom. In a fully-fledged sense taxonomy, the stipulation

could be abbreviated to “pair sense X with sense Y,” where X and Y are numbers

representing individual senses. The third piece of information, enclosed within slashes,

is the clausal contextual elements discussed in section 4; for instance, in the idiom šaal

a\¤\aas ‘take the lead’, \aas must be definite. As presented here, the contextual pro-

perties are unordered, and include thematic information (\aas = Patient), morphological

information (e.g., \aas must be definite), and referential information (disjoint reference).

This is for expository purposes; the systematization of frame elements is outside the

scope of this article. The pattern repeats itself for the other main components; for

example, {lamma \aas} = ‘unite’ requires \aas to have a plural possessor.

34. One can ask if the semantics of the expression can even be expressed without

both metaphoric and metonymic metalanguage. In a characterization such as “it is as if

my head represents me,” “as if” is a prototypical representation of metaphor and “repre-

sent” is a prototypical metonymic predicate.

35. Riemer (2005:157) writes that “linguistic analysis cannot aim to supply a unique

analysis of any object language meaning, and should rather adopt an interpretive,

instrumental role” (2005:157). He elsewhere speaks of “an infinite number of inter-

pretive processes by which the matching between a putative conceptual representation

and its denotation is implemented” (2005:158). This idea is echoed in a slightly different

context by Haser (2005:181¤93), who emphasizes that source lexemes may be mapped

onto different conceptual metaphors in a multiplicity of ways (e.g. ‘defend’ might map on

to ARGUMENT IS WAR, ARGUMENT IS PRESERVATION, or other conceptual metaphors), that

a multiplicity of conceptual metaphors can be attributed to one concept (e.g., ARGUMENT

IS: WAR/PRESERVATION/PHYSICAL SUPPORT/. . .), and that one and the same metaphorical

expression may map on to multiple conceptual metaphors (2005:228).

36. Moreover, within studies of idioms different categories of idioms are usually

recognized. Glucksberg (2001:73—76), for instance, distinguishes four classes: noncom-

positional idioms (e.g., by and large), nonanalyzable idioms (e.g., kick the bucket), com-

positional and transparent idioms, and metaphorically combining expressions.

37. Or, similarly, as Riemer (2005:167) asks, given a theory of lexical organization

based on the idea of a core meaning and extensions derived via metonymic and meta-

phoric processes, are there universal tendencies among languages in the world as to how

metonymy and metaphor are used to expand meanings? However, as Riemer would

appear to imply, even if a theoretical framework can be agreed upon, we are nowhere

near even having adequate databases to undertake such research.

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maiduguri

Sticky Note

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Documents

Idioms, polysemy, context