Linguistics

Questions tagged [idiomaticity]

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Use of segmentally complex expressions whose semantic structure is not deducible jointly from their syntactic structure and the semantic structure of their components. -- Weinreich (1972:89)

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Do we have any evidence or research on the linguistic evolution of idioms?

Do we have any evidence or research on the linguistic evolution of idioms? For example, if two languages in the same language family have idioms with a similar meaning, is it likely that such an ...
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74 views

How is "In we go" syntactically valid?

Various simple sentences occur in English that I can't explain precisely. "In we went!" "Off he goes!" Is this an arcane idiom from an earlier grammar, or is there a general rule that can be ...
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34 views

what theories of idioms cover depth of idiomaticity?

It is obvious that, in English, the phrasal verb "get up" (meaning to awake and move out of bed) and the idiom "raining cats and dogs" (meaning rain strongly) have different depths of idiomaticity. ...
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104 views

Is there such a thing as "idiomatic density"?

I have heard about lexical density, but is there such a thing as "idiomatic density", and if so, does it have an established name? "Idiomatic density" would measure the effectiveness by which a ...
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1answer
110 views

Origin of “hold from” as an idiom meaning “love, like, respect” in European languages

Several European languages known to me have a verbal phrase idiom literally translatable as "hold from", expressing various kinds of positive attitude: Dutch houden van "love" Finnish pitää -stA "...
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53 views

Term for universally-used quote with additional, non-compositional meaning

There exist certain fixed expressions which people use to convey quite specific meanings and (at least to me) always invoke a famous saying which is assumed to be common knowledge, such as I am not a ...
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1answer
97 views

Name of the act of borrowing linguistic concepts from different languages

What is the term for concepts that got translated from one language or another? I've heard this term in a conversation about Czech Anglicisms such like: "Mějte hezký den." - the literal version of ...
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216 views

The Correct Research Methodology To Substantiate If an Expression is an Idiom?

Related: - Does linguistics have a concept of "set phrase" with a meaning differing from "idiom"? - In the Gospels, Can “Day of:” the Passover - be Interpreted Idiomatically? 1. ...
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1answer
54 views

Within various languages, how often are colours used to signify a condition or a feeling?

I've seen in the English language that colors are used to signify what a person feels or a condition that person exists in (i.e. 'blue' referring to sadness and 'red' referring to anger.) I also know ...
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1answer
356 views

Identifying phrasal verbs

I'm helping some native English speakers to learn Swedish. I have a large list of sentences which I wish to organise by linking each sentence to its associated set of meanings. For example: Jag: ...
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551 views

Is there any corpus for idioms?

I'm looking for a corpus for English (American, GB, Australian) idioms. Preferably created manually, because I already have two, but they are rather small and were built semi-automatically.
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1answer
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What is the difference between "idiom and proverb"? [closed]

For example 'Kick the bucket." Is it an idiom or proverb? How can I recognize them?
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170 views

Reasons for things named same way in seemingly unrelated languages

How did it come different languages share idiomatic expressions, or name something in same words? Like, take word "inflammation" for example. In English, it's "in(ner)" and "flame". In Ukrainian, it'...
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1answer
1k views

How do idioms and metaphors fit into the principle of compositionality?

The principle of compositionality is formulated as: The meaning of a complex expression is a function of the meaning of its parts and of the syntactic rules by which they are combined. (Partee, ...
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1answer
99 views

Abbreviation taking the meaning of the whole expression

In English and some other languages (such as Portuguese and possibly Italian), the word "calculus" is actually an abbreviation from "differential and integral calculus" that has taken the meaning of ...
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2answers
2k views

Establishing the most common "semantic units" in a corpus

I have a corpus concerning spoken English, where the most common words include: you, the, i, to, a. However, I'm not only interested in words but also groups of consecutive words where the meaning is ...
5
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1answer
486 views

Body parts and metaphor

Across languages, body parts are used as part of a metaphor, whether it is in an idiom or in a phrasal construction. Do any know of any survey like academic paper that investigates the whys and hows ...
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2answers
311 views

Which other languages have idiomatic meaning for words meaning 'blue'? [closed]

I came across culture-specific meanings of concept 'blue' (that is, of a colour hue between green and violet) in various languages. We know its idiomatic meanings in Standard or American Englishes, ...
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3answers
415 views

Perception of time

In most cultures and languages, the future is associated with direction ahead of the speaker, while the past is "behind". However, it is the opposite in modern Chinese where future is "behind" and ...
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876 views

Linguistic idiomaticity in different languages

I've been reading this article about linguistic idiomaticity, and there's a good research on English idioms and indirect speech, in general. I've been thinking on different amounts of idiomaticity in ...

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