6
votes
Are there languages without idioms?
It depends on what you mean by "idiom"*, but I don't know of any examples, and if such a language were known to exist, it would be a big deal. So I would guess that nobody has identified any such ...
- 16.5k
6
votes
What is the subfield of linguistics that studies how different languages use different grammatical and lexical tools to put expressions together?
The sub-fields that you are talking about are syntax, semantics and typology, however what is probably more relevant is the sub-school that focuses on what you're interested in. I would say that this ...
- 66.7k
3
votes
Is there a term for
The general term for any chunk of language that's self-contained -- a phrase, a clause, a sentence -- is Constituent. Syntax is all about constituents, because syntactic processes only apply to ...
- 9,607
2
votes
Are kinship+Name Multi-word expressions?
From the definition, the words have to belong together and form another meaning to be multi word expressions. But Uncle and John convey two completely separate meanings.
One difference to an MWE is ...
- 292
2
votes
How to extract meaning of colloquial phrases and expressions in English
This is very difficult. I'll recommend three things:
Use the U of I CogComp shallow parser to get phrases (not CoreNLP), see: http://nlp.cogcomp.org/ It's much better at picking up phrases, IMO.
If ...
- 654
2
votes
Is there a term for
There are some terms of interest in that field, the most general of them is
collocation assuming no specific relationship between the words. Then, there is multi word expression assuming that the ...
- 25.7k
1
vote
Are there languages without idioms?
I don't think that any concept of “idiom” could be considered a property of specific languages. Rather, idioms are ways how humans use language to express things, to explain things in a way that's not ...
- 436
1
vote
singular part of speech for multi-word units and expressions?
I find the question and much of the discussion so far contaminated by confusions between language and writing and between word and phrase. "Frying pan" is a noun; it is a compound, made up of two ...
- 12.3k
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