Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, August, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 96-107)

M.A. / Idioms, sayings and poetry in the Bantu languages are examples of idiomatic usage of language. Idiomatic language or figurative language differ in certain respects from literal or non-figurative language usage. Many studies on proverbs and idioms in Zulu have been published but none have as yet made an in depth study of the linguistic characteristics of proverbs and idioms. A comparison between proverbs and Zulu poetry has also never been attempted. Thorough studies concerning the Sotho languages have been made in this regard. In this study, the linguistic characteristics of Zulu proverbs and idioms are compared to findings made in Northern Sotho and Southern Sotho in order to determine if linguistic peculiarities and other aspects found in the Sotho languages are also present in Zulu proverbs and idioms. Chapter 2 deals with the basic linguistic characteristics of Zulu proverbs. The characteristics are similar to those found in Northern and Southern Sotho. The basic linguistic characteristics include a complete and unchanging syntactical structure. A small number of Zulu proverbs have syntactical differences. In such cases a proverb has been recorded by various writers, each with a difference, mainly in the verb. The variants include changes in verb tenses, the presence or absence of verb extensions and the deletion of the copulative particle.

<p>This thesis deals with idioms taken from contemporary newspapers. The purpose is to find out which idioms are known and used by native speakers of different ages and also to what extent the entries in the dictionaries offer accurate descriptions to the meaning of these idioms. We already know that idioms which have been modified, as often is the case in newspapers, are often more difficult to understand than others.</p><p>The study has been conducted by means of questionnaires answered by native speakers in Germany. In order to assess the ability that German native speakers have to understand and use these idioms, I have chosen informants from three age groups; the first two groups of informants are grammar school students at a German Gymnasium, in the 7 and the 10 form respectively and the last group consists of adult speakers in Germany with university education. This last group conforms to the final phase of language acquisition.</p><p>The results clearly show that younger generations - and to a certain extent older students and indeed educated adults - are less likely to understand idioms which have complex explanations in the dictionaries and/or whose meanings have been modified. Similarly, all age groups are more likely to understand idioms with simple explanations, those which appear frequently on the Internet and those whose meanings have not been modified, though there is a higher degree of “tolerance” when it comes to complex idioms among the adults.</p><p>It is also clear that the meaning of an idiom cannot always be fully explained out of context. In most cases dictionaries offer an explanation that functions in most contexts, yet it is not uncommon for the meaning of an idiom to be complex and to vary more or less depending on the context. As a way to find out how frequent the idioms are, I have compared their frequency in www.Google.de and found that there is a clear correlation between high frequency in Google and the knowledge displayed by the informants.</p>

This thesis deals with idioms taken from contemporary newspapers. The purpose is to find out which idioms are known and used by native speakers of different ages and also to what extent the entries in the dictionaries offer accurate descriptions to the meaning of these idioms. We already know that idioms which have been modified, as often is the case in newspapers, are often more difficult to understand than others. The study has been conducted by means of questionnaires answered by native speakers in Germany. In order to assess the ability that German native speakers have to understand and use these idioms, I have chosen informants from three age groups; the first two groups of informants are grammar school students at a German Gymnasium, in the 7 and the 10 form respectively and the last group consists of adult speakers in Germany with university education. This last group conforms to the final phase of language acquisition. The results clearly show that younger generations - and to a certain extent older students and indeed educated adults - are less likely to understand idioms which have complex explanations in the dictionaries and/or whose meanings have been modified. Similarly, all age groups are more likely to understand idioms with simple explanations, those which appear frequently on the Internet and those whose meanings have not been modified, though there is a higher degree of “tolerance” when it comes to complex idioms among the adults. It is also clear that the meaning of an idiom cannot always be fully explained out of context. In most cases dictionaries offer an explanation that functions in most contexts, yet it is not uncommon for the meaning of an idiom to be complex and to vary more or less depending on the context. As a way to find out how frequent the idioms are, I have compared their frequency in www.Google.de and found that there is a clear correlation between high frequency in Google and the knowledge displayed by the informants.

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Idioms play an important role in language acquisition but learners do not have sufficient time to learn all of them. Therefore, learners need to focus on the most frequently occurring idioms, which can be determined by corpus searches. Building off previous corpus studies, this study generated a comprehensive list of English idioms by combining lists from several sources and developed a methodology for organizing and sorting idioms within the list. In total, over 27,000 idiom forms were amalgamated and a portion of the list was compiled, which featured 2,697 core idioms and 5,559 variant idiom forms. It was found that over 35% of idioms varied structurally and thirteen types of idiom variation were highlighted. Additionally, issues concerning idiom boundaries were investigated. These results are congruent with previous findings which show that variation is a commonly occurring element of idioms. Furthermore, specific problematic elements for future corpus searches and English language learners are identified.

Multiword Expressions (MWEs) are crucial aspects of language use. Second language (L2) learners need to master these MWEs to be able to communicate effectively. In addition, mastering these MWEs helps L2 learners improve their cognitive processing of language input. In this study, my primary objectives were to explore the effectiveness of using Textual Enhancement (TE) to assist L2 speakers’ comprehension of MWEs, to explore whether there is a difference in comprehension between collocations and idioms, and finally, to explore how L2 speakers transact the MWEs’ meanings as presented in texts. While several researchers have explored how input enhancement in general helps L2 learners to learn collocations and idioms for productive use (e.g., Boers et al., 2017; Pam & Karimi, 2016), my focus in this study was to understand and explain in depth how the technique of TE helps L2 learners comprehend MWEs. I included in this study two types of MWEs: collocations and idioms. I also studied the differences in the comprehension between these two types to further understand the transparency factors in the comprehension process. I employed an explanatory sequential mixed methods design in which I used experimental quantitative methods and qualitative methods in one study. In phase one, I started with the experimental part and followed with the qualitative analysis to explain in depth the outcomes of the experimental part. In the qualitative section, I followed an explanatory descriptive case study approach to obtain a deeper understanding of how the participants transacted the meanings of the MWEs. A total of 26 adult Arabic-speaking students in a major Southeastern university in the United States of America volunteered to take part in this study. I collected data through: (1) a reading proficiency test, and (2) a brief survey to gather background information, self-evaluation of language proficiency, and previous experiences with MWEs. In the experimental part, I presented 20 paragraphs derived from online newspaper and magazine articles. Each paragraph contained a collocation or an idiom. Following each paragraph, I presented multiple-choice questions to measure the comprehension of the MWE in the paragraph and an open-ended question for the participants to describe how they had comprehended the MWE. I divided the participants into control and experimental groups in which the MWEs were textually enhanced in the experimental group using bolding, italicization, and highlighting. The results of the study demonstrated TE was effective in assisting the participants to comprehend idioms. In contrast, TE did not show a significant effect in leading the participants to comprehend the collocations. The qualitative data analysis showed the participants used contextual factors, guessing, constituents of the MWEs, and similarities of the MWEs with the first language (L1) as the major strategies to comprehend the MWEs meanings with different degrees between both groups.

Previous work on Chinese idioms has made significant on both meaning derivation process as well as internal combination patterns. As for teaching idioms at junior high schools, recent textbooks encounter three problems: first, there is no appropriate idiom lists; second, teachers rarely mention their syntactic functions and collocational relations; third, students often use idioms in the wrong way. This study aims to investigate syntactic functions of idioms, by examing the learners¡¦ errors. Chap1 clarifies the definition and the characteristics of idioms. Chap2 prosecutes error analysis. Three types of error are identified: semantic errors, grammar errors and semantic restriction errors which are the most frequent type. With regard to the influence of the familiarity and transparency of idioms, idioms that are low familiar and opaque make learning more difficult. After understanding the learning difficulties, chap4 studies syntactic functions and internal construction of idioms. The main construction type is subject-predicate and the most popular function is predicate. We cannot predict the function of an idiom by its construction, and the argument of an idiom doesn¡¦t affect its function neither. However, the core elements of an idiom is correlate with its function. Chap5 explains learners¡¦ difficulties and designs teaching strategies, such as teaching collocation. Moreover, this paper provides two idiom lists, one for junior high school students, the other for advanced learners.

published_or_final_version / Chinese / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This thesis is concerned with the historical analysis of French idioms from both theoretical and methodological points of view. An idiom is considered as a figurative expression whose meaning is not equal to the sum of its components’ meanings. In the first part, after drawing distinctions between such terms as locution, expression or phrasème, I survey the key elements in the analysis of idioms: their syntax, semantics and lexical features. I discuss various theories to see how they can relate and be applied to a historical study. I deal first with the syntactic approach which describes the various grammatical features of idioms basing my analysis mostly on works by Gross. It shows that, while figurative expressions are often syntactically similar to non-figurative expressions, they do not allow much leeway in their morphological and syntactic variations because their meaning is closely linked to their form. However a grammatical description is not sufficient for a diachronic analysis of idioms. Secondly, I take a close look at semantic description as it appears in works by theoricians such as Weinreich, Greciano and Rey. In particular I show that it is necessary to put the idiom back in its context in order to grasp its real meaning. While not rejecting the rhetorical approach, this process allows us to avoid systematic assimilation of idioms as rhetorical figures. A diachronic analysis shows that an idiom can be a literary figure, a cultural figure, or a sociological one. Therefore its description must rely as much on a pragmatic approach as on a semantic one. The second part of my study adopts a methodological approach. The objective is to develop a method of analysis that can be applied to a lexicographical description of idioms. The originality of the study relies partly on the fact that the analysis is based on an electronic literary data-base as well as on formal dictionaries. Animal metaphors, nine of which are closely analysed, are chosen to illustrate the methodology. Each case study is divided into three main parts: the history and etymology of the idiom, its socio-cultural representation and implication and its linguistic description. Much emphasis is put on highlighting the ways in which the idiom becomes part of the text. In the last chapter of the thesis I develop a new descriptive model for a historical dictionary of idioms. The focus is to describe the expression with as much precision as is usual for words. The model is based particularly on works by Wartburg (FEW) and Mel’ëuk (Dictionnaire lexico-combinatoire). The main result of this study is to demonstrate that idioms need to be viewed as discrete linguistic units. For this reason they must be studied strictly in context. Another major contribution is that in many specific cases my research has allowed me to go further than other historical studies. An example is entre chien et loup whose origin can be traced back to a Hebrew text, and whose first use in a French text goes back to the very early 13th century. Lastly, the study of the idiom’s situational context shows us that phrasemes allow a connection to be made between language and culture, because they are often a linguistic reflection of a belief, saying, or folk tale.