Trip the freaking light fantastic: Syntactic structure in English verbal idioms

Neal, Anissa

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/104709 Copy

Description

Title

Trip the freaking light fantastic: Syntactic structure in English verbal idioms

Author(s)

Neal, Anissa

Issue Date

2018-09-10

Keyword(s)

• Linguistics
• Syntax
• Semantics
• Idioms
• English

Abstract

In past scholarship, idioms have been discussed from a mostly semantic perspective; authors have been primarily concerned with how idiomatic meaning is composed and stored (Swinney and Cutler 1979; Gibbs 1980; 1986). This article investigates idioms’ syntactic behavior and concludes that all verbal idioms of English have stored, internal syntactic structure. Vacuous modification (i.e. modification that does not contribute to the semantics of the phrase), metalinguistic modification (i.e. modification that indicates non-literal readings), aspect, and subject-oriented adverbs (SOAs) are used to test a variety of idioms for evidence of syntactic structure. There are restrictions on the syntactic processes some idioms can undergo (i.e., passivization and raising constructions). However, this is not due to their lack of internal syntax, but how their meaning is mapped onto the internal syntax.

Publisher

Studies in the Linguistic Sciences: Illinois Working Papers

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/104709

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