Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T04:58:18.362Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Idiom storage and the lexicon1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2017

TAL SILONI ,
JULIA HORVATH ,
HADAR KLUNOVER  and
KEN WEXLER
TAL SILONI*
Affiliation:
Tel Aviv University
JULIA HORVATH*
Affiliation:
Tel Aviv University
HADAR KLUNOVER*
Affiliation:
Tel Aviv University
KEN WEXLER*
Affiliation:
MIT
*
Author’s address: Department of Linguistics, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, 69978 Tel Aviv, Israel[email protected]
Author’s address: [email protected]
Author’s address: [email protected]
Author’s address: MIT Linguistics and Philosophy, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, 32-D808, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Using a new methodology, the paper reports experimental work that sheds light on the organization of the lexicon, the storage technique of phrasal idioms, and the derivation of various diatheses. We conducted an experiment to examine the pattern of distribution of phrasal idioms across several diatheses. Native speakers of Hebrew were taught invented Hebrew idioms inspired by French idioms. The idioms were headed by predicates of three diatheses: a verbal passive, an adjectival passive, and an unaccusative verb. After learning the idioms, the participants evaluated for each idiom how likely it was that it shared its idiomatic meaning with its transitive version. The results show that the distribution of phrasal idioms depends on the diathesis of their head. Subjects perceived the likelihood of the verbal passive to share idiomatic meanings with its transitive counterpart as significantly higher than that of both the adjectival passive and the unaccusative. The findings provide support for the claim that phrasal idioms are stored in the lexicon, not in an extra-grammatical component, since their perception by speakers turned out to be dependent on a grammatical property, the diathesis. This dependency can be explained if phrasal idioms are stored as subentries of their head. The findings also reinforce the view that adjectival passives and unaccusatives are listed in the lexicon, but not verbal passives. Finally, they support the existence of an active lexicon, where thematic operations can apply.

Keywords

adjectival passivelexiconphrasal idiomunaccusativeverbal passive
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , 01 February 2018 , pp. 189 - 215
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[1]

This research was supported by Grant No 2009269 from the United States–Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF). We are grateful to Julie Fadlon for the statistical analysis. We would also like to thank Julie Fadlon, Aya Meltzer-Asscher and three anonymous Journal of Linguistics referees for their helpful comments.

References

Anagnostopoulou, Elena. 2003. Participles and voice. In Alexiadou, Artemis, Rathert, Monika & von Stechow, Armin (eds.), Perfect explorations, 1–36. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Arad, Maya. 2005. Roots and patterns: Hebrew morpho-syntax. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Aronoff, Mark. 1976. Word formation in generative grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Baker, Mark, Johnson, Kyle & Roberts, Ian. 1989. Passive arguments raised. Linguistic Inquiry 20, 219–251.Google Scholar
Baltin, Mark. 1989. Heads and projections. In Baltin, Mark & Kroch, Antony S. (eds.), Alternative conceptions of phrase structure, 1–16. Chicago, IL & London: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bat-El, Outi. 1994. Stem modification and cluster transfer in Modern Hebrew. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 12, 572–596.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berman, Ruth. 2008. On written expository and narrative texts produced by school children, adolescents, and adults (cross-linguistic comparisons): The psycholinguistics of developing text construction. Journal of Child Language 35, 735–771.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bobrow, Samuel A. & Bell, Susan M.. 1973. On catching on to idiomatic expressions. Memory and Cognition 1.3, 343–346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolozky, Shmuel. 1978. Word formation strategies in the MH verb system: Denominative verbs. Afroasiatic Linguistics 5, 1–26.Google Scholar
Borer, Hagit. 1988. On the morphological parallelism between compounds and constructs. In Booij, Geert & van Marle, Jaap (eds.), Morphology yearbook 1, 45–65. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Borer, Hagit. 2005. Structuring sense, vol. 1: In name only & vol. 2: The normal course of events. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Borer, Hagit & Grodzinsky, Yossef. 1986. Syntactic cliticization and lexical cliticization: The case of Hebrew dative clitics. In Borer, Hagit (ed.), The syntax of pronominal clitics (Syntax and Semantics, 19), 175–215. New York: Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bresnan, Joan(ed.). 1982. The mental representation of grammatical relations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cacciari, Cristina & Tabossi, Patrizia. 1988. The comprehension of idioms. Journal of Memory and Language 27, 668–683.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chierchia, Gennaro. 2004. A semantics for unaccusatives and its syntactic consequences. In Alexiadou, Artemis, Anagnostopolou, Elena & Everaert, Martin (eds.), The unaccusativity puzzle: Studies on the syntax–lexicon interface, 288–331. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Collins, Chris. 2005. A smuggling approach to the passive in English. Syntax 8.2, 81–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Di Sciullo, Anna Maria & Williams, Edwin. 1987. On the definition of word. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Dubinsky, Stanley & Ron Simango, Silvester. 1996. Passive and stative in Chichewa: Evidence for modular distinctions in grammar. Language 72, 749–781.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erbach, Gregor. 1992. Head-driven lexical representation of idioms in HPSG. In Everaert, Martin, van der Linden, Erik-Jan, Schenk, André & Schreuder, Rob (eds.), Proceedings of IDIOMS, vol. 1: International Conference on Idioms , 11–24. Tilburg: Institute for Language Technology and AI.Google Scholar
Everaert, Martin. 2010. The lexical encoding of idioms. In Rappaport-Hovav, Malka, Doron, Edit & Sichel, Ivy (eds.), Lexical semantics, syntax and event structure, 76–98. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frost, Ram & Plaut, Dave. 2005. The word-frequency database for printed Hebrew. http://word-freq.mscc.huji.ac.il/index.Google Scholar
Gehrke, Berit & Marco, Cristina. 2014. Different ‘by’-phrases with adjectival and verbal passives: Evidence from Spanish corpus data. Lingua 149 (Part B), 188–214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibbs, Raymond W. 1980. Spilling the beans on understanding and memory for idioms in conversation. Memory and Cognition 8.2, 449–456.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Halle, Morris & Marantz, Alec. 1993. Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection. In Hale, Ken & Jay Keyser, Samuel (eds.), The view from Building 20: Essays in linguistics in honor of Sylvain Bromberger, 111–176. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Harley, Heidi. 2013. External arguments and the Mirror Principle: On the distinctness of Voice and v. Lingua 125, 34–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harley, Heidi & Noyer, Rolf. 1999. State-of-the-article: Distributed Morphology. Glot International 4.4, 3–9.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 1993. More on the typology of inchoative/causative verb alternations. In Comrie, Bernard & Polinsky, Maria (eds.), Causatives and transitivity, 87–120. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horvath, Julia. 1981. On the status of vowel patterns in Modern Hebrew: Morphological rules and lexical representations. In Thomas-Flinders, Tracy (ed.), Inflectional morphology: Introduction to the Extended Word-and-Paradigm Theory (Occasional Papers #4: Working Papers in Morphology), 228–261. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA, Department of Linguistics.Google Scholar
Horvath, Julia & Siloni, Tal. 2008. Active lexicon: Adjectival and verbal passives. In Armon-Lotem, Sharon, Danon, Gabi & Rothstein, Susan (eds.), Current issues in generative Hebrew linguistics, 105–134. Amsterdam & Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horvath, Julia & Siloni, Tal. 2009. Hebrew idioms: The organization of the lexical component. Brill’s Annual of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics (BAAL) 1, 283–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horvath, Julia & Siloni, Tal. 2011. Causative across components. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 29.3, 657–704.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horvath, Julia & Siloni, Tal. 2016. Idioms: The type-sensitive storage model. Ms., Tel Aviv University.Google Scholar
Horvath, Julia & Siloni, Tal. 2017. ‘Constructions’ and grammar: Evidence from idioms. In Bowern, Claire, Horn, Laurence & Zanuttini, Raffaella (eds.), On looking into words (and beyond): Structures, relations, analyses, 471–488. Berlin: Language Science Press.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray. 1975. Morphological and semantic regularities in the lexicon. Language 51, 639–671.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray. 1997. The architecture of the language faculty. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Koontz-Garboden, Andrew. 2009. Anticausativization. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 27, 77–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koopman, Hilda & Sportiche, Dominique. 1991. The position of subjects. Lingua 85.1, 211–258.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levin, Beth & Rappaport-Hovav, Malka. 1986. The formation of adjectival passives. Linguistic Inquiry 17, 623–661.Google Scholar
Levin, Beth & Rappaport-Hovav, Malka. 1995. Unaccusativity: At the syntax–lexical semantics interface. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Marantz, Alec. 1997. No escape from syntax: Don’t try morphological analysis in the privacy of your own lexicon. In Dimitriadis, Alexis, Siegle, Laura, Surek-Clark, Clarissa & Williams, Alexander (eds.), Proceedings of the 21st Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium (PLC) (University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 4.2), 201–225. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
McIntyre, Andrew. 2013. Adjectival passives and adjectival participles in English. In Alexiadou, Artemis & Schäfer, Florian (eds.), Non-canonical passives, 21–42. Amsterdam & Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meltzer-Asscher, Aya. 2011. Adjectival passives in Hebrew: Evidence for the parallelism between the verbal and adjectival systems. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 29, 815–855.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meltzer-Asscher, Aya. 2012. Verbal passives in Hebrew and English: A comparative study. In Everaert, Martin, Marelj, Marijana & Siloni, Tal (eds.), The theta system: Argument structure at the interface, 279–307. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meltzer-Asscher, Aya & Siloni, Tal. 2013. Unaccusative. In Khan, Geoffrey (ed.), Encyclopedia of Hebrew language and linguistics. Boston, MA: Brill. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2212-4241_ehll_EHLL_COM_00000804 (accessed 19 September 2017).Google Scholar
Nunberg, Geoffrey, Sag, Ivan A. & Wasow, Thomas. 1994. Idioms. Language 70.3, 491–538.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Grady, William. 1998. The syntax of idioms. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 16, 279–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Punske, Jeffrey & Stone, Megan. 2014. Idiomatic expressions, passivization and gerundivization. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the LSA, Minneapolis, MN.Google Scholar
Pylkkänen, Liina. 2008. Introducing arguments. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramchand, Gillian. 2008. Verb meaning and the lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reinhart, Tanya. 2002. The theta system: An overview. Theoretical Linguistics 28.3, 229–290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruwet, Nicolas. 1991. Syntax and human experience. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Shlonsky, Ur. 1997. Clause structure and word order in Hebrew and Arabic: An essay in comparative Semitic syntax. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siloni, Tal. 2002. Active lexicon. Theoretical Linguistics 28.3, 383–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siloni, Tal. 2012. Reciprocal verbs and symmetry. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 30.1, 261–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sprenger, Simone A., Levelt, Willem J. A. & Kempen, Gerard. 2006. Lexical access during the production of idiomatic phrases. Journal of Memory and Language 54, 161–184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swinney, David C. & Cutler, Anne. 1979. The access and processing of idiomatic expressions. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 18.5, 523–534.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ussishkin, Adam. 1999. The inadequacy of the consonantal root: Modern Hebrew denominal verbs and output–output correspondence. Phonology 16, 441–442.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wasow, Thomas. 1977. Transformation and the lexicon. In Culicover, Peter W., Wasow, Thomas & Akmajian, Adrian (eds.), Formal syntax, 327–360. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar