This essay presents a study of retention of idioms delving into a pedagogical approach by presenting them to a group of lower secondary students. The study also explores students’ memory retention whilst concurrently investigating if certain types of idioms are retained to a greater extent than others. For the sake of assessing memory retention in relation to these various types of idiomatic transparency, the selected idioms have been divided into three separate categories; transparent, semi-transparent and opaque depending on their literal and figurative meaning. This essay argues that opaque idioms are retained to a lesser extent in memory due to their non-transparent metaphorical meaning. In fact, the most striking finding is that idioms pertaining to the opaque category are indeed more difficult for students to learn and are also forgotten the fastest. Previous research has put emphasis on the complex structure of idioms and opinions seem divided regarding to what extent the teaching of idioms should be implemented together with other vocabulary items in a classroom setting. On the other hand, the same research emphasizes the great value of idioms; potentially expanding student vocabulary and making the English language more nuanced and native-like.

The ultimate aim of this research is to design a Catalan>English bilingual electronic dictionary of somatic idioms. To do so, we undertake a semasiological characterisation of somatic idioms to determine their semantic value and morphosyntactic combinatorial possibilities going from language to abstraction, identifying the differences in conceptualisation between Catalan and English and their equivalence relationship on the basis of their occurrences in corpora. The methodology used for the description of these somatisms is based on lexicogrammar but in a bottom-up manner. The theory of lexicogrammar (M. Gross 1975, 1981) holds that every elementary phrase is constituted by at least one first order predicate that introduces its arguments, represented by nouns or phrases. For example, in the phrase 'Luc admire le courage de Léa', we can find the verbal predicate 'admirer' with its arguments 'Luc' and 'Léa', that are morphologically equivalent to 'Luc est admiratif (pour + devant) le courage de Léa', with an adjective predicate, and 'Luc a de l'admiration pour le courage de Léa', with a nominal predicate, since there is no change in the structure of arguments (Le Pesant & Mathieu-Colas 1998: 8). This entails a systematic description of the syntactic and semantic properties of verbs, predicate nouns and adjectives in the form of tables that represent a class of lexical elements –characterised in terms of syntactic-semantic features (such as human, animal, plant, concrete, abstract, locative and temporal)–which correspond to a certain syntactic category with a series of common distributional and transformational properties. However, this description is insufficient for the complete automatic treatment of language; this is why in 1992 G. Gross adds to lexicogrammar the notion of object classes: semantic groups defined by the syntactic relations they maintain with one or more classes of verbs, called appropriate predicates (Gross 2012: 101). This exhaustive description of the language has made it possible to consider certain linguistic phenomena like fixation for the automatic treatment of language. Considering that computerised corpora play a very prominent role in usage-based linguistics, a trend that considers grammar and use to be closely interrelated, lexicogrammar can represent a theoretical model particularly suitable for the detection and analysis of phraseological units (PhUs) in corpora. In particular, we focus on the description of the 50 most frequent idioms in Catalan containing one of the five most common anthropomorphic somatic lexemes in all languages: hand, head, heart, eye and ear (Mellado 2004). To identify which are these 50 most frequent idioms (10 per each lexeme), we retrieve all the occurrences for each of the five mentioned lexemes from the Corpus Textual Informatitzat de la Llengua Catalana (CTILC) (~ 52M words with texts from 1833-1988). Then we carry out a semi-automatic extraction of the different combinations of the most frequent bigrams (candidates for idioms of the dictionary) for each somatic lexeme using the software Metaconcor. For example, for mà (hand), we obtain: a mà (at hand), a mà (by hand), entre mans (on [one’s] hands), de mà en mà (from hand to hand), mà d’obra (labour force), mà dura (firm hand), picar de mans (to clap [one’s hands]), lligar de peus i mans (to tie [sb’s] hands and feet), a mans plenes (liberally) and rentar-se’n les mans (to wash [one’s] hands [of]). We also consider the most frequent verbal and nominal co-occurrences of each bigram. Once we have translated the Catalan idioms into English, we apply this step to the English equivalents based on their occurrences in the British National Corpus (BNC) (~ 100M words with texts from 1985-1994). In order to design the dictionary, we undertake a syntactic-semantic description of the Catalan idioms and their equivalents in English –indicating its argument structures and semantic values according to the object class to which we ascribe them (the one referring to the values of <somatisms>)–, based on the occurrences of these units offered by the CTILC for Catalan and the BNC for English. This analysis is expressed through a tagging recognised by automatic language processing systems, based on the one used by the Laboratoire de Linguistique Informatique (LLI) –current LDI (Lexiques, Dictionnaires, Informatique) from the Paris 13 University–, whose dictionaries follow the system of the Laboratoire d’Automatique Documentaire et Linguistique (LADL) (Paris 7) –founded by M. Gross in 1968– and incorporate the notion of G. Gross’ object classes (1992). Having identified the most frequent idioms and their English equivalents, as well as their distributional (syntagmatic relations) and transformational possibilities (paradigmatic relations), we give account of their semantic relations (for both languages): conceptual variations (polysemy), intersynonymic variants (relations of synonymy), their eventual relations of antonymy and hyperonymy and their paradigmatic variants (according to their occurrences in the corpora used). All this information is registered in the dictionary in the form of four coordinated files with fields of different nature (cf. 2): two files containing the arguments of the idioms (one file for Catalan and another file for English) and two files containing the predicates (i.e. the idioms as entries) (one file for Catalan and another one for English). Considering the relevance object classes may have in fixed expressions, our dictionary mostly contains idioms –predicates– that combine invariable (argument human nouns) and variable (anthropomorphic somatic lexemes) elements –arguments–: for example, to wash <one’s> hands (of)/C:<so-ma:elre>/G:v/N0:<hum>/N1:<so-ma:elre>/N3:<ina>/Ca:rentar-se les mans (d’) <alguna cosa>, where N0 refers to the subject (a human), and N1 to the first complement (direct object) in the argument structure of this idiom with the somatic lexeme (so) hand, which in this case has a semantic value of refusal of responsibility (elre) (in other cases this lexeme will be in idioms which may evoke, among others, proximity or facility [at hand], manual labour [by hand], activity [on (one’s) hands], severity [firm hand], itinerancy [from hand to hand], human resources [labour force], approval, enthusiasm or attention [to clap (one’s hands)], immobility or repression [to tie (sb’s) hands and feet] and abundance [liberally], which will be reflected in the argument file). N3 is the third complement, which here corresponds to a concrete inanimate object (<ina>)(e.g. “I’m entirely opposed to the er (pause) the idea that they should wash their hands of their (pause) er, obligations er, the nineteen sixty eight act (pause) as” [BNC]). In this case there is no N2 complement, which usually refers to an indirect object. Ca indicates the Catalan equivalent of the idiom. Opting for an electronic phraseological dictionary with a semasiological approach implies, on the one hand, finding the PhUs contained in it more easily, since instead of departing from specific concepts, it departs from the semantic values of the units (idioms) grouped in a linguistically well-defined object class. On the other, it offers the advantage of being suitable for Natural Language Processing, as it has a coding recognised by automatic language processing systems, incorporating numerous fields with information of morphological, syntactic-semantic (the most common distributional and transformational properties) and diasystematic nature (if applicable). It also contains a specific field referred to translations into other languages (bilingual or multilingual). Therefore, these repertoires have a dual function: decoding and encoding information. In fact, one of the main advantages offered by semasiological electronic dictionaries over more traditional ones is that they present in different entries each of the argument structures of a predicate, which allows it to be monosemised. Thus, each usage of a predicate is conceived as a lexical unit to which a description is assigned, a sine qua non for machine translation. This is particularly relevant to hybrid systems, which combine statistics with syntax and semantics (e.g. Systran and Sadaw). The eventual product derived from this thesis, as well as the linguistic data (methodology, examples, tagging and files), can be considered unprecedented. Until now, lexicogrammar had been implemented based on linguistic intuition, which could make the creation of object classes somehow biased by the linguist’s idiolect. Using a syntactic-semantic tagging based on the above-mentioned methodology enables precision and objectivity, starting from real language instances (occurrences of these idioms in corpora). All in all, the usability and replicability of the linguistic data provided in the research may offer a wide range of possibilities, since this tagging could be implemented into linguistic analysis tools (e.g. in the form of tags in the “part of speech” label if idioms are used) and the model could be replicated to expressions from other lexico-phraseological fields, different types of PhUs and other languages. / La present tesi doctoral ha rebut el finançament del contracte d’investigació predoctoral Ayudas para la Formación de Profesorado Universitario (Ref. FPU17/0032) concedit pel Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte d’Espanya (actual Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades). El projecte de tesi s’ha inscrit en el si de l’Institut Superior d’Investigació Cooperativa IVITRA [ISIC-IVITRA] (Programa per a la Constitució i Acreditació d’Instituts Superiors d’Investigació Cooperativa d’Excel∙lència de la Generalitat Valenciana, Ref. ISIC/012/042) i s’ha desenvolupat en el marc dels projectes, xarxes i grups de recerca següents: «Variación y cambio lingüístico en catalán. Una aproximación diacrónica según la Lingüística de Corpus» (MICINUN, Ref. PGC2018-099399-B-100371); (IEC, Ref. PRO2018-S04-MARTINES); Grup d’Investigació VIGROB-125 de la UA; Xarxa de recerca en innovació en docència universitària «Lingüística de Corpus i Mediterrània intercultural: investigació educativa per a l’aplicació de la Lingüística de Corpus en entorns multilingües diacrònics. Aplicacions del Metacorpus CIMTAC» (Institut de Ciències de l’Educació de la UA, Ref. 4581-2018), i Grup d’Investigació en Tecnologia Educativa en Història de la Cultura, Diacronia lingüística i Traducció (Universitat d’Alacant, Ref. GITE-09009-UA).

This quantitative study used eye-tracking technology to compare the attentional focus of 32 native English speakers and 26 native Korean speakers at the university level as they read idiomatic and literal phrases within well-formed sentences. Results revealed that native Korean speakers read both literal and idiomatic sentences slower than native English speakers. Additionally, native Korean speakers read idiomatic sentences slower than literal sentences, whereas native English speakers did not show a significant difference. Variables relating to language socialization, language development and idiom knowledge were also investigated to find which variables were correlated with reading measures. Of the variables tested, idiom knowledge was the only one that had significant effect on reading measures. These findings suggest that Korean speakers take longer to process English idioms as lexical units, though idiom familiarity seems to mitigate this effect.

This diploma thesis is embodied in a wider phraseological project CREAMY (Calvino REpertoire for the Analysis of Multilingual PhraseologY) solved at the University of Rome La Sapienza. The aim of the thesis was to compare the Italian multi-word expressions from the novel Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno, written by Italo Calvino, with their counterparts in the Czech translation by Libor Piruchta, with the aid of a data-set obtained through the phraseological web database CREAMY. Processing of part of the Czech entries into the database was integral to writing the thesis. The work is divided into theoretical and practical part. The first chapter of the theoretical part provides basic information about the CREAMY project and the web application of the same name, which is the main tool used in the research within the project. The second chapter deals with the basic typological properties of the studied languages with emphasis on morphosyntax and word formation. The third chapter is devoted to multi-word expressions and their conception in the Italian and Czech linguistic tradition. The introductory chapter of the practical part describes the procedure of entry processing in the CREAMY application. In this chapter, we present two specific examples of processed entries but we also point out the...

No description available.

Complex predicates (CP) have attracted the attention of a number of linguists, and their syntactic properties have been widely investigated cross-linguistically. This paper describes Swahili “complex predicates”, that is, verbal constructions (V+N) which resemble a typical verb-object relation, but function like a single lexical verb. In particular, we will deal with a specific type of CP, involving body part terms as part of the predicate, such as -fa moyo, lit. die heart, ‘despair’; -kata ini, lit. cut liver, ‘cause suffering’; or -toka damu, lit. go out blood, ‘bleed’. We show how body part nouns differ from other nominal elements typically employed in complex predicates, both in their syntactic properties (e.g. object marking and possessor raising) and in their semantic characteristics (e.g. degree of semantic compositionality). Indeed, body part terms are often employed to conceptualize more abstract entities and ideas which belong to different semantic domains. Unlike other nominal elements, they seem to occupy the slot of regular objects, while they are not syntactic arguments of the verb, but rather define the scope, range, character or extent of the process.

The problem of this thesis is: To determine whether there are Hebraic idioms in the Small Plates of Nephi in the Book of Mormon that have been retained in translation. An idiom is defined as any peculiar genius of the language: grammatical, syntactical, or verbal imagery. Non-Hebraic idioms were not considered.The assumptions underlying the problem are:1. The Book of Mormon is a record of the Nephites whose cultural, social, and lingual milieu originated in Israel.2. The Book of Mormon was originally written according to a Hebrew pattern of thought and communication.3. Joseph Smith, as a young man inexperienced with languages and inept by training as a translator, tended to translate literally.

This thesis has been a study of possible lexical Hebraisms occurring in the Book of Mormon in the sections entitled "The Words of Mormon" through "Moroni." A Hebraism was defined as any word or phrase which appeared to be a literal rendering of a Hebrew lexicographic mode of speech, in that the English had a usage or connotation which was not normal; whereas, if translated literally into Hebrew it would represent standard usage. Nearly two hundred such items were found, some one hundred twenty of which were discussed in the body of the thesis. Of these, nouns contributed over sixty examples, verbs more than thirty and the remainder were distributed among the rest of the parts of speech. This accumulation of Hebraisms could be evidence either of Joseph Smith's exceptional ability to recall biblical wording while under the influence of the Holy Spirit or evidence of Hebraic wording in the original coming through in Joseph Smith's translation.

The ambiguous nature of idioms has been a persistent challenge for English language learners and researches alike. Problematic issues include identifying which idioms are most pertinent for study, and the question of how frequently idiom forms found in dictionaries and other canonized resources actually function as idioms in real language use. This study differentiates between idiom forms used idiomatically (idiom-principle) versus literally (open-choice principle), and provides quantitative data to assess this difference. The data was obtained through a corpus analysis of 1,000 randomly-selected idioms in 10,000 randomly-selected contexts (10 contexts per idiom), and revealed that the majority of idiom forms were indeed functioning idiomatically in the contexts analyzed, but there were also notable exceptions. The findings are used to support the general notion in the literature that idioms represent a single lexical choice for language users, and the researcher proposes several extensions of the findings for the teaching and researching of idioms.

В нашей магистерской диссертации приводится разработка методики работы над фразеологизмами в иностранной аудитории, креативный подход к изучению лексики, грамматики, фонетики. В нашем исследовании мы рассматриваем фразеологию в широком смысле и относим к фразеологическому фонду идиомы, фразеологические сочетания, в которых лишь один из компонентов обладает фразеологически связанным значением, пословицы, поговорки, крылатые выражения, речевые штампы, а также слова со связанным значением. В работе приведена система тщательно подобранных упражнений и материалов, которые можно широко использовать на уроках РКИ. Разная сложность материалов позволяет использовать их для учащихся разных уровней владения русским языком. / Our master's thesis provides the development of a methodology for working on phraseological units in a foreign audience, as well as a creative approach to the study of vocabulary, grammar, phonetics. In our study, we consider phraseology in a broad sense and refer idioms, phraseological combinations in which only one of the components has a phraseologically related meaning, proverbs, sayings, winged expressions, speech stamps, as well as words with a related meaning to the phraseological fund. The paper presents a system of carefully selected exercises and materials that can be widely used in lessons of Russian as a foreign language. The different complexity of the materials allows them to be used for students of different levels of Russian language proficiency.