Interesting Quotes About Idioms

citaty People use stresss to make their language richer and much(prenominal) colorful and to convey subtle shades of core or intention. idioms argon used often to replace a literal word or expression, and many times the idiom better describes the full nuance of meaning. Idioms and idiomatical expressions can be more precise than the literal words, often development fewer words but saying more. For example, the expression it runs in the family is shorter and more succinct than saying that a physical or personality peculiarity is fairly common throughout one(a)s extended family and over a proceeds of generations. (Gail Brenner, Websters New World American Idioms Handbook. Websters New World, 2003) ? If natural language had been intentional by a logician, idioms would not exist. (Philip Johnson-Laird, 1993) Idioms, in general, be deeply connected to culture. . . . Agar (1991) proposes that biculturalism and bilingualism are two sides of the same coin. Engaged in the inte rtwined figure out of culture change, learners establish to understand the full meaning of idioms. (Sam Glucksberg, Understanding metonymic Language. Oxford Univ. Press, 2001) ? Shakespeares Idioms Shakespeare is credited with coining more than 2,000 words, infusing thousands more existing ones with electrifying new meanings and forge idioms that would last for centuries. A fools paradise, at one fell swoop, hearts content, in a pickle, send him packing, too much of a neat thing, the game is up, good riddance, love is blind, and a sorry sight, to name a few. (David Wolman, Righting the Mother spit From Olde face to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling. Harper, 2010) ? Levels of Transparency Idioms vary in transparency that is, whether their meaning can be derived from the literal meanings of the individual words. For example, make up ones mind is rather transparent in suggesting the meaning reach a decision, while kick the bucket is far from transparent in representi ng the meaning die. (Douglas Biber et al. , Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Pearson, 2002) The thought hit me that this was a middling pathetic way to kick the bucketbeing accident in ally poisoned during a photo shoot, of all thingsand I started weeping at the idiocy of it all. (Lara St.John) ? The Idiom Principle The observation that meanings are made in chunks of language that are more or less predictable, though not fixed, sequences of morphemes leads John Sinclair in Corpus concordance Collocation, 1991 to an articulation of the idiom teaching. He states the principle thus The principle of idiom is that a language user has available to him or her a bigger number of semi-preconstructed phrases that constitute single choices, even though they might shape up to be analysable into segments (Sinclair 1991) 110) The study of fixed phrases has a fairly long impost . . , but phrases are normally seen as outside the normal organising principle of language . Here, Sinclair extends the notion of phraseology to encompass a great deal more of language than it is commonly considered to encompass. At its strongest, we might say that all senses of all words exist in and are identified by the sequences of morphemes in which they typically occur. (Susan Hunston and Gill Francis, Pattern Grammar A Corpus-Driven Approach to the Lexical Grammar of English.John Benjamins, 2000) ? modal(a) Idioms Modal idioms are idiosyncratic verbal formations which consist of more than one word and which have modal meanings that are not predictable from the circumstances parts (compare the non-modal idiom kick the bucket). Under this heading we include have got to, had better/best, would rather/sooner/as soon, and be to. (Bas Aarts, Oxford Modern English Grammar. Oxford University Press, 2011)