The case of VP Idioms

Workshop on Encoding Motion in Language
Department of Finnish
Åbo Academy University
March 11-12, 2004
Jussi Niemi & Sinikka Niemi (University of Joensuu):
From Motion Verbs to Pseudo-Motion Expressions:
The case of VP Idioms
1. Lexicalization: From Full Verb VP’s to VP Idioms
2. What Should We Do with Lexicon re VP Idioms?
Phrasal (VP) Idioms of Type kick the bucket, spill the beans
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Contents
1. Overall Lexicalization Path of VP’s
2. Sidetrack: Grammaticalization and Lexicalization
2.1 English VP Idioms, Or How You Can Drag-Ass and Give
Good Studio
2.2 The Case of the Finnish vetää ‘pull’, Or How You Can
‘Pull Yourself to the Ground’ When You Just In Fact
‘Fall’
3. Phrasal Idioms as Lexical versus Syntactic Units: A
Solution to a (Pseudo)Problem
3.1 Phrasal Idioms As Lexical Expressions
3.2 Phrasal Idioms As Syntactic Expressions
3.3 A Way Out of Impasse: Idiom Processing At Lexicon/Grammar –
Pragmatics Interface
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1. Lexicalization “Path”
Four Stages of Lexicalization of EnglishV+N and V+N+P Structures
Such as lose sight of (Akimoto 1995)
Stage 1: Full Computation (e.g., “free syntax”, literal semantics)
All the constituents are unrestricted (i.e., not indexed to their
mates)
Stage 2: Lexical Reanalysis (Reorganization)
The noun becomes decategorialized (or rather, is demoted in the
continuum of categoriality); it may lose some of its nominal
features (e.g., number, definite article).
The semantic relationship between the verb and preposition
becomes fixed.
Stage 3: Syntactic Reanalysis
E.g., [lose] [sight of X] > [lose sight of] X
Stage 4: Full Lexicalization
*lose-sight-of
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2. Sidetrack: Grammaticalization and Lexicalization
Recent critique of classic views of grammaticalization (e.g., Lang.
Sciences, 2001) where grammaticalization is seen as:
a unidirectional (irreversible) process
from (pragmatics/discourse to) syntax to morphology, or
from grammatical to more grammatical expressions
Newmeyer (2001):
Grammaticalization as an epiphenomenon involving
(a) structural re-analysis
(b) semantic changes (bleaching)
(c) phonological reduction
Cf. lexicalization:
(a) structural re-analysis:
[lose] [sight of X] > [lose sight of] X
(b) semantic changes: lose sight of ‘lose contact with’
(c) phonological reduction: helluva (< hell of a) racket
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2.1 English VP Idioms, Or How You Can Drag-Ass
and Give Good Studio
Random House Dictionary of American Slang (ed. J. Lighter), Vol. I
(A–G), 1994, Vol. II (H – O), 1997. NY: Random House.
2.1.1 Development from drag SPEC ass to drag-ass V
drag [(one’s)] ass (also: haul ass (1918-), haul tail (1924-), haul butt
(1968-)) ‘to depart; go; proceed’
1926 SPEC
1934 no SPEC:
But the minute things start getting tough you want to “drag arse”
out.
1937 SPEC
1950 SPEC
1953 SPEC
1944-57 no SPEC:
[…] he keeps right on goin’ when everyone else is draggin’ ass.
1960 no SPEC:
Time to drag ass back, Isolde.
1963 no SPEC:
He told them to drag ass, and you know they dragged?
1968 SPEC
1971 SPEC
1974 SPEC
1975 no SPEC
1963-64:
He drag-assed right upstairs. (Cf. haul-ass, v. 1958-)
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See also:
bust a nut 1. Esp. Black E. a. (of either sex) to have an orgasm
1938-1968: 6 occurrences, all with SPEC
1975: He closed his eyes ... while he was bustin' nut.
haul [pull] (one's) freight, 1. Esp. West. ‘to get moving; go; leave
hurriedly’
1885-1936: 10 quotes, all with specifiers
1944-1970: 5 quotes, 2 w/ bare nouns
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2.1.2 Give Good Studio
give head ‘to perform fellatio or cunnilingus’
1941, dictionary-type entry:
“Head. A generic noun or predicate nominative referring to
fellator, as, e.g., “looking for head” Term reported from Montreal
in 1940.”
1956-1965: 4 instances, all with SPEC
1968: 1st textual occurrence without SPEC (note quotation marks):
A man who refuses to “give head to his woman” […] (Playboy)
1976-1994 6 occurrences, all without SPEC
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give good, or great X (X = sg. count noun treated as mass noun) 'to
be notable for X', 'to be notable for the use of or abilities with X' Used
to generate usu. joc. nonce phr.., all reminiscent of (and patterned
after) give head, exx:
1971: give good belt
1979: give great phone:
How do you keep your job?
I give great phone.
1981: give great cactus
1982: give great studio
When she finished, the artist said, “You give great studio.”
1991: give great spiel
Rush [Limbaugh] gives great spiel. (Time)
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2.2 The Case of the Finnish vetää ’pull’, Or How
You Can ‘Pull Yourself to the Ground’ When In
Fact You Just ‘Fall’
SKES/SSA
vetää (as early as Agricola [C16]; frequent in dialects) ’transport,
haul/drag, take (with oneself); suck away; pull out; make tense, tune;
wring, attract; be big/large enough for’, etc.
NSS
vetää VI. 1. ‘stretch, make tense; to straighten, manufacture by
tensing’
[...]
2. related to preceding as regards sound. a. ‘prolong articulation’
Paunonen & Paunonen (2000)
1920- ’copulate’ (tr.), e.g. Tenkku veti ... Lissuu ’Tenkku fucked
Lissu’
COPULATE (of men)
Sex-related asymmetry, only male agents/subjects with vetää
cf. structures with Patient complements, where the anatomy of
the COMP always refers to the female counterpart, e.g.
vetää (X:ää) rusetti-in lit. ’pull (X) [X’s] bow tie-ILL’
vetää (X:ää) viikse-en lit. ’pull (X) [X’s] moustache-ILL’
vetää (X:ää) villa-an lit. ’pull (X) [X’s] wool-ILL’
vetää reva-ksi/an lit. ’pull cunt-TRA/ILL’
vetää tikit
lit. ’pull stitches’
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INGEST
1940- ’smoke’
1960- ’eat’
’drink alcohol’
1980- ’to use drugs’
Nowadays even “in other phrases” (Paunonen):
vetää keikka-a
lit. ’pull gig-PAR’,
i.e., ’perform (‘do’!) a musical gig > job’
Paunonen: ’steal’
Perhaps extended from ’play an instrument using pulling motion or
the sound of which is more or less continuous’ (SKES), which in turn
is
extended from ’prolong utterance/voice (e.g., in singing)’ (SKES)
vetää ‘do/perform’ (cf. E. pull, as in pull a job, pull a fast one)
vetää laata-t
lit. ’pull floor tile–ACC:PL’, i.e. ’throw up, vomit’
vetää [itsensä] keto-on lit. ’pull [oneself] field-ILL’, i.e. ’fall
down (REFLEXIVE)’
1. In falling (and vomiting), there is inherent movement.
2. Fi. vetää (inter alia) ‘do, perform’
Ergo: If a descriptive V+’landing site N’ phrase were needed, vetää
would be the verb.
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Vetää, web pages:
Mitä ne mulle räppää,
What they me-to rap
vetää mulle paskaa läppää
pull me-to shit(ty) mouth (coll.), i.e., talk
‘What are they rapping to me,
talking shit to me’
http://homokaasu.org/tarina/story.gas?id=59, date Feb. 18, 2004
jereme rogers on vitun kova sekä koston
Jereme Rogers is cunt’s tough and ?Koston
joka kans vetää hulluja trikkejä
who also pulls crazy tricks
‘Jereme Rogers is a fucking tough [guy] and so is Koston who pulls
crazy tricks’
http://fi.rocsport.com/reviews/viewreviews.htm?ID=134, date
Feb. 18, 2004
joskus jotkut ihmiset vetää tappelun kamalan
sometimes some people pull fight terrible
‘Sometimes some people make a terrible fight.’
http://:www.rakkausrunot.com/runoilija, date Feb. 18, 2004
kasvain kasvaa kaulas, elämä vetää switch stancee
tumor grows throat-in, life pulls switch stance
‘A tumor grows in the throat, life does a Switch Stance’ (Switch
Stance, a Michigan rap group)
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Avain: Yhdes iltaan (e.g., in Slangi.Net at:
http://koti.mbnet.fi/joyhan/H3X.html), date Feb. 18, 2004
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A Synopsis of vetää and vetää idioms:
vetää Meanings Time
‘pull’, ‘prolong articulation’
“old”, “established”
*************************************************
‘copulate’ [of men] 1920
‘ingest’ ‘smoke’ 1940
‘eat’
‘drink alcohol’ 1960
‘use drugs’ 1980
w/ COMP: ‘perform/act’ 1980–
e.g., ‘pull [a gig] (-> ‘steal’)
‘vomit’, ‘talk’, ‘fall down’, ‘fight’
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3. Phrasal Idioms as Lexical versus Syntactic
Units: A Solution to a (Pseudo) Problem
Grammar
Regularity
Predictability
Rule-governed Processes
Computation
Lexicon
Irregularity/Idiosyncracy
Arbitrariness
Unit Access & Retrieval
Storage
Anomalies
Suppletive inflection
(e.g., go : went)
“Productive” derivation
(e.g., caritative -less, -tOn)
syntactic freezes, collocations, constructions
phrasal verbs like shut up, put down
phrasal idioms like kick the bucket, spill the beans
constructions like [twist]ing the [night] away
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3.1 Phrasal Idioms As Lexical Expressions
Anomalies
a. Idiomatic words are not paradigmatically free units (“words”).
kick the bucket may mean ‘die’, while
punt the bucket and
kick the pail may not (?).
b. Idiomatic interpretation is holistic.
c. Idiomatic (content) words do not carry their literal readings
d. Metaphoric interpretation (if any) arises from the whole idiom
The content words spill and beans in spill the beans do not per
se evoke ‘reveal’ and ‘secret’, respectively.
e. Like other semi-fixed constructions, idioms may form “families”
with a constrained range of lexical variation but with no
(appreciable) semantic change (cf. radial categories).
get/start/set the ball rolling
f. Idiomatic isolates, e.g. F. mönkään, pälkähästä (Nenonen 2002)
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3.2 Phrasal Idioms As Syntactic Expressions
Anomalies
a. Narrow range of syntactic variation
English: hierarchy of transformations/frozenness, Fraser 1970)
1. Unrestricted
2. Reconstitution (e.g., nominalization)
3. Extraction (e.g., topicalization)
4. Permutation (e.g., passivization)
5. Insertion (e.g., addition of ADV)
6. Adjunction (e.g. FIN > participle)
7. Frozen
Finnish: restrictions, no clear-cut hierarchy (Niemi et al. 1995,
Nenonen 2002)
Permissible Changes in Form/Idiom (N = 70)
No. Changes Allowed No. Idioms
None 6
1 6
2 19
3 15
4 12
6 7
7 4
8 1
b. Asyntactic/ungrammatical form
e.g., lose face, kick/haul/drag ass
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Niemi, S. (submitted)
syntax of Swedish V + Object(like) N VP’s:
1. Free phrases, e.g. träffa flickan ‘meet the-girl’
2. Idiomatic VP’s with inflected noun complements, e.g., bryta isen
‘relieve tension’, lit. ‘break the ice’
3. VP’s with the so-called naked (count) nouns, e.g., röka pipa ‘be a
pipe-smoker’, lit. ‘smoke [no article] pipe’
4. VP’s with mass noun complements using the same verbs as in (3),
e.g., röka hasch ‘smoke hashish’
5. VP’s with metonymically used complement nouns, e.g., spela Bach
‘play [music composed by] Bach’
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100
90
80
70
60
50
Free VP's
VP idioms w/ inflected nouns
VP's w/ naked count nouns
VP's w/mass nouns
VP's w/metonymic nouns
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3.3 A Way Out of Impasse: Idiom Processing At
Lexicon/Grammar – Pragmatics Interface
Preparatory Observations
Processual Autonomy of Lexicon
Lexical decision with semantic priming
In the corner of the roof the man saw roaches, spiders and other bugs.
bug ‘concealed microphone’
‘insect’
[...] roaches, spiders and other bugs. ANT
MIKE
Both literal and idiomatic readings are activated in normals in
immediate testing; a few seconds later: only appropriate pairing
facilitated (here: bug -> ant).
Ergo: In perception, lexicon is autonomous (for a brief moment).
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Right-hemisphere aphasic patients perform inadequately with
idioms in off-line tasks, but not in online tasks (word-monitoring,
with idiomatic readings faster) (Tompkins et al. 1992).
Alzheimer patients do access both literal and idiomatic meanings but
they are unable to suppress literal meanings in off-line
comprehension tasks, (Papagno et al. 2003).
Redundancy (morphology & lexicon: dual route models)
Post-lexical and post-grammatical suppression
Interface with pragmatics/world knowledge
Leave Your Lexicon Alone!
And Remember James McCawley!
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