Idiomi, Lecture 03, 13_14

8/11/2019 Idiomi, Lecture 03, 13_14

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/idiomi-lecture-03-1314 1/22

Collocation and chunking

8/11/2019 Idiomi, Lecture 03, 13_14


Collocation

Language is strongly patterned: many

words occur repeatedly in certain

lexicogrammatical patterns.

Psycholinguistic research – language is

processed in chunks. The basic unit for

encoding and decoding may be the group,

set phrase, or collocation, rather thanortographic word.

8/11/2019 Idiomi, Lecture 03, 13_14


8/11/2019 Idiomi, Lecture 03, 13_14


8/11/2019 Idiomi, Lecture 03, 13_14


8/11/2019 Idiomi, Lecture 03, 13_14


Kinds of collocation

2. A second kind of collocation ariseswhere a word requires association with amember of a certain class or category ofitem, and such collocations areconstrained lexicogrammatically as well assemantically, e.g. word rancid, adj. istypically associated with butter , fat , andfoods containing butter or fat.

8/11/2019 Idiomi, Lecture 03, 13_14



In other cases, a word has a particular

meaning only when it is in collocation with

certain other words, e.g. face the

truth/facts/problem.

Also, selection restrictions on verbs may

specify certain kinds of subject or object,

e.g. the verb drink normally requires ahuman subject and a liquid as object.

8/11/2019 Idiomi, Lecture 03, 13_14



3. A third kind of collocation is syntactic,

and arises where a verb, adjective, or

nominalization requires complementation

with, for example, a specified particle.Such collocations are grammatically well

formed and highly frequent, but not

necessarily holistic and independent, e.g.to be, one of , had been, you know , thank

you very much, are going to be, etc.

8/11/2019 Idiomi, Lecture 03, 13_14


Two principles underlying language

The open choice principle

The idiom principle

These two principles are diametricallyopposed,and both are required in order toaccount for language.The open choice principle – a way of seeinglanguage text as a result of a very large numberof complex choices. At each point where a unit is

completed (a word or a phrase or a clause) alarge range of choices opens up, and the onlyrestraint is grammaticalness.

8/11/2019 Idiomi, Lecture 03, 13_14


8/11/2019 Idiomi, Lecture 03, 13_14


Two principles underlying language

Example: of course – orthography and

the open choice model suggests that this

sequence comprises two different choices:

one at the o f slot, and one at the course slot.

– the idiom principle suggests that it is a

single choice which coincidentally occupiestwo word spaces.

8/11/2019 Idiomi, Lecture 03, 13_14


The idiom principle

This principle is seen not only in fixed strings (e.g. ofcourse) but also in other kinds of phraseological unit,e.g. greetings and social routines demonstrate theidiom principle. Sociocultural rules of interaction restrict

choices within an exchange which may be realized infairly fixed formulations.

Sayings, similes, and proverbs also represent singlechoices, even when they are truncated or manipulated,and they may be prompted discoursally as stereotyped

responses, e.g. (every clou d has) a si lver l ining ; nonews is good news – these are predictable commentson common experiences.

8/11/2019 Idiomi, Lecture 03, 13_14


The idiom principle

There are also recurrent clauses and other

units that demonstrate the idiom principle,

e.g. from can I come in?, are you ready?

to it’s as easy as falling off a log .

Memorized clauses and clause

sequences form a high proportion of the

fluent stretches of speech heard ineveryday conversation.

8/11/2019 Idiomi, Lecture 03, 13_14


Psycholinguistic aspects of

chunking

Research into language acquisition –

suggests that language is learned, stored,

retrieved, and produced in multi-word

items, not just as individual words orterms.

8/11/2019 Idiomi, Lecture 03, 13_14


Processing of FEIs

Research into the psycholinguistic processing of FEIsadresses questions such as: how FEIs are recognized;how they are stored in the mental lexicon; whetheridiomatic meanings are retrieved before, after, orsimultaneously with literal meanings; how variations

and inflections are handled.In attempting to find out how FEIs are processed, thenotion of the ‘idiom list’ has been incorporated into thehypothesis that idioms are stored separately in themental lexicon. The analysis of the literal meaning

occurs separately from the idiomatic meaning. Theliteral meaning is normally processed first, and when theprocessing fails to yield an interpretation for the context,the ‘idiom list’ is accessed.

8/11/2019 Idiomi, Lecture 03, 13_14


Processing of FEIs

According to another hypothesis, idiomsare stored and retrieved like singlewords and idiomatic and literalmeanings are processedsimultaneously. The experiments showthat subjects decode idiomatic meaningsfaster than literal ones.

There is a third hypothesis, whichintroduces the notion of the ‘key’ word,which is a component word in an FEI thattriggers recognition of the whole.

8/11/2019 Idiomi, Lecture 03, 13_14


Lexicalization

With respect to FEIs, lexicalization is the process bywhich a string of words and morphemes becomesinstitutionalized as part of the language and develops itsown specialist meaning or function.

Lexicalization of FEIs results from a three-way tensionbetween quantitative criterion of institutionalization, thelexicogrammatical criterion of fixedness, and thequalitative criterion of non-compositionality, but there areproblems with all these criteria: institutionalization andfrequency are not enough on their own, fixedness can be

misleading (there is instability of forms), non-compositionality is dependent on the ways in which themeanings of individual words are analysed both indictionaries and notional lexicons.

8/11/2019 Idiomi, Lecture 03, 13_14


Diachronic considerations

Instituationalization is a diachronic process – much of the lexical, syntactic and semanticanomalousness of FEIs results from historicalprocesses. Cranberry collocations such as to

and fro and kith and kin contain lexical items thatwere formerly current.

The ill-formed collocation th rough th ick andthin is an ellipsis of through th icket and th inwood , and of course is an ellipsis of a matterof course , or of cou rse and custom , or ofcommon course .

8/11/2019 Idiomi, Lecture 03, 13_14



FEIs disappear, and others emerge.

Metaphors, initially transparent, come infrom sporting, technical, and other

specialist domains, e.g. businessmetaphors such as there’s no such thingas a free lunch. As neologisms becomeinstitutionalized and divorced from their

original contexts of use, the explanation ormotivation for the metaphor may becomelost or obscure.

8/11/2019 Idiomi, Lecture 03, 13_14



Some metaphorical FEIs and proverbs may be

traced back to classical or Biblical sayings or

historical events, e.g .better late than never , all

roads lead to Rome , an eye for an eye , burnone’s bridges/boats.

Catchphrases drawn from cinema, television,

politics, journalism and so on become

institutionalized as sayings and other kinds offormula – this is an obvious way in which English

fixed expressions realize intertextuality:

8/11/2019 Idiomi, Lecture 03, 13_14


And now for something completely different

Didn’t she do well

Go ahead, make my day

I think we should be told

I’ll be back

I’ll have what she’s having

Pass the sick bag, Alice

That will do nicely

There is no alternative (abbreviated as TINA)

This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship

The white heat of this revolution

We wuz robbedIt takes two to tango (song by Hoffman and Manning)

When the going gets tough, the tough get going (popularized by JosephKennedy)

The opera isn’t over until the fat lady sings (Dan Cook)

8/11/2019 Idiomi, Lecture 03, 13_14


Documents

Idiomi, Lecture 03, 13_14