Idioms and Idiomacity

The field of phraseology or idiom in any language is so varied and fascinating that one could spend a lifetime analyzing and observing it from various points of view. In linguistics, phraseology describes the context in which a word is used. This often includes typical usages/sequences, such as idioms, phrasal verbs, and multi-word units.

Even so, we are going to shed light on the studies carried out on such an important area of ​​language. We will focus on two approaches; semantics and culture; therefore, our concern is the translation of two-word idioms into Turkish.

From the introduction, from Collins’ COBUILD Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs, we quote the following lines to show the close relationship between our research topic and this reference: ‘Idioms are one of the most interesting and difficult parts of the English vocabulary. They are interesting because they are colorful and alive and because they are linguistic curiosities. At the same time, they are difficult because they have unpredictable meanings or collocations and grammar, and often have special connotations. Idioms are frequently overlooked in general dictionaries and in classroom teaching, because they are considered fringe items that are quaint but not meaningful. However, research on idioms shows that they play an important role in spoken and written language, particularly in conveying evaluations and developing or maintaining interactions. (Sinclair et al. 1995:iv)

The central problem one runs into when trying to define “idiom” is to identify the property (or properties) that will adequately capture all idioms in a language and exclude all non-idioms. Various approaches to idiomaticity will be presented in this chapter along with various definitions of what a language is.

Idiomaticity is at the core of the notion of idioms. Mainly, the question in idiomaticity is to analyze what idiomatic idioms are like, that is, how unpredictable the meaning of an idiom is from its literal counterparts. Some idioms are completely idiomatic and the words that make up the idiom seem to have no sensible meaning of their own as a unit without the idiomatic meaning, some idioms have both literal and idiomatic meanings (metaphorically or arbitrarily different meanings), which are used together; some idioms are only partially idiomatic, that is, one word can be taken literally and the rest idiomatically (semi-idioms).

Idioticity can also be called phraseology. Gläser (1988, 265-266) clarifies the following: ‘This is the corresponding term among Soviet and Eastern European linguists when describing established expressions whose meaning cannot be derived from the meanings of their parts. However, the term phraseology is also used to describe “1) the inventory of

phrases or set expressions, and not just idioms; 2) the linguistic subdiscipline of

lexicology that studies and classifies established expressions (phraseological units in the

in the broadest sense)”

Weinreich (1972: 89) sees “idiomaticity…a phenomenon that can be described as the use of segmentally complex expressions whose semantic structure is not jointly deducible from their syntactic structure and the semantic structure of their components”.

Idiomaticity According to the authors of the Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English, “Idiomaticity is largely, though not entirely, a matter of meaning.” That is, idioms are characterized mainly by their semantic unity and lack of motivation.

According to Hockett (1956: 222) “An idiom is a grammatical form – single morpheme or compound form whose meaning is not deducible from its structure”.

Later, Hockett in his 1958 “Course in Modern Linguistics” is the first of the modern Western grammarians to seriously consider language definitions and their consequences. His discussion is worth quoting at length:

‘Let us momentarily use the term ‘AND’ for any grammatical form whose meaning is not deducible from its structure. Any ‘Y’ in any occurrence that is not a constituent of a larger ‘Y’, is an idiom. A large number of compound forms in any language are idioms. . (Hockett 1958: 172)

The idioms will go like this from morphemes to proverbs or even poems, going through pronouns, proper names and rhetorical figures. The formation of a language is an ongoing process, and Hockett makes this important point in the following words: “the less productive a pattern is, the more likely it is that if the pattern coins a new form, it will have idiomatic value.” (Hockett 1958:308) In general, Hockett’s description of language emphasizes the following points: Idiomaticity is considered to be completely ubiquitous in language, that is, idiomaticity is common everywhere: present and seen or felt everywhere.

Hockett deliberately and carefully admits morphemes in idiom status, while other definitions exclude individual morphemes (referring to ‘arrays of morphemes’, a ‘group of morphemes’, or specifying an idiom as a complex, a morpheme as a simple expression) or even words. It is not particularly the forms that are idioms, but the occurrences of forms in the context of particular statements.

Generally speaking, Hockett is painstaking in fully mapping the territory covered by his definitions of language, and the class he has constituted is certainly linguistically significant. Hockett’s definition of idiom may sound finicky, but in the framework of generative linguistics, it is the logical consequence of the morphological analysis of words, and therefore a necessary stage in forming a theory of idiom. Hockett considered idioms to be any type of non-compositional expression.

Weinreich’s article (1969: 226). ‘Problems in the Analysis of Idioms’ is an attempt to establish criteria on which to base the characteristic features of idioms. Weinreich accepts as idioms only multi-word expressions that have literal equivalents. Those expressions that cannot show this criterion are considered malformed and therefore disqualified as idioms. The reason he gives for not including units like by and large is that they are merely stable and familiar. Weinreich gives his definition of a language as ‘a phraseological unit involving at least two polysemous constituents, and in which there is a reciprocal contextual selection of subsenses…’

Weinreich also claims that “the semantic difference between idioms and their literary equivalents is arbitrary” (1969: 229, 260). This should mean that the relationship between the general figurative meaning of idioms and their wording (ie, the choice of words in an idiomatic sequence) is completely ad hoc. This claim cannot be sustained, since it is very likely that “the figurative meanings of idioms are not arbitrary, but are partly determined by how people conceptualize the domains to which the idioms refer.” This idiom is used in the following Guardian newspaper article dated 25 March 2006

The Iraqi hostages’ were saved by the break between the hijacker. The guards chickened out after American was shot.”

If people conceptualize ‘cold feet’ as ‘a loss of courage to do something’, the way the string of words is selected will depend on people’s concepts of ‘cold feet’. Since ‘cold feet’ seems to symbolize the loss of courage.

As can be seen, Weinreich’s claim that idioms must have literal equivalents cannot be held in a large number of cases, since idioms are unique in terms of their semantics. Furthermore, the arbitrary nature of the link between idioms and their literal counterparts is dubious when we consider that the way people conceptualize the world around them is reflected in the language they use.