Variation Within Idiomatic Variation: Exploring the Differences Between Speakers and Idioms

Authors

  • Kristina Geeraert University of Alberta, Canada
  • John Newman University of Alberta, Canada; Monash University Melbourne, Australia
  • R. Harald Baayen University of Tübingen, Germany

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29038/eejpl.2020.7.2.gee

Keywords:

idioms, idiomatic variation, creativity, experimental, person-oriented, English

Abstract

Corpus-based research on idiomatic variation has shown that idioms can be utilized with an extensive range of variation, including the possibility of idioms occurring with adjectival modification (e.g. make rapid headway), lexical variation (e.g. the calm/lull before the storm), and partial forms (e.g. birds of a feather [flock together]). Previous experimental research eliciting variation within idioms has tended to focus on unintended ‘slips of the tongue’, or errors in production.  To date, no experimental study has explored the creativity that speakers can employ when using idioms. This study, by contrast, aims to elicit conscious and spontaneous productions of idiomatic variation, exploring just how creative speakers can be when using idiomatic expressions. Participants were asked to create headlines for newspaper snippets using provided idioms. They were explicitly told that the expression did not have to be exact and that they could be as creative as they wanted. The headlines for each idiom and each speaker were then examined. Variational patterns are observed for both idioms and speakers. For instance, some idioms (e.g. jump on the bandwagon) typically occur with partial forms, lexical variation, and/or adjectival modification; whereas other idioms (e.g. call the shots) are predominantly used in their canonical form. Similarly, some speakers (e.g. Speaker 14037) demonstrated considerable flexibility and playfulness when using the expressions, while other speakers (e.g. Speaker 14020) preferred minimal, if any, modification to the idioms. These results not only converge with previous corpus-based findings, but they also highlight the individual differences between speakers, as well as reveal how creative and innovative speakers can be when using idiomatic expressions.

 

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

References

Ayto, J. (Ed.). (2009). From the horse’s mouth: Oxford dictionary of English idioms. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Barlow, M. (2000). Usage, blends and grammar. In M. Barlow & S. Kemmer (Eds.), Usage-based models of language (pp. 315–345). Stanford: CSLI Publications.

Bergman, L. R., & Lundh, L.-G. (2015). Introduction: The person-oriented approach: Roots and roads to the future. Journal for Person-Oriented Research, 1(1–2), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.17505/jpor.2015.01

Cutting, J. C., & Bock, K. (1997). That’s the way the cookie bounces: Syntactic and semantic components of experimentally elicited idiom blends. Memory & Cognition, 25(1), 57–71. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197285

Dąbrowska, E. (2012). Different speakers, different grammars. Individual differences in native language attainment. Linguistics Approaches to Bilingualism, 2(3), 219–253. https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.2.3.01dab

Dąbrowska, E. (2015). Individual differences in grammatical knowledge. In E. Dąbrowska & D. Divjak (Eds.), Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics (pp. 650–668). Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110292022-033

Dąbrowska, E. (2016). Cognitive linguistics’ seven deadly sins. Cognitive Linguistics, 27(4), 479–491. https://doi.org/10.1515/cog-2016-0059

Davies, M. (2008). The corpus of contemporary American English: 450 million words, 1990-present. Retrieved from: https://www.english-corpora.org/coca

Divjak, D., Dąbrowska, E., & Arppe, A. (2016). Machine meets man: Evaluating the psychological reality of corpus-based probabilistic models. Cognitive Linguistics 27(1), 1–33. https://doi.org/10.1515/cog-2015-0101

Duffley, P. J. (2013). How creativity strains conventionality in the use of idiomatic expressions. In M. Borkent, B. Dancygier, & J. Hinnell (Eds.), Language and the creative mind (pp. 49–61). Stanford: CSLI Publications.

Fay, D. (1982). Substitutions and splices: A study of sentence blends. In A. Cutler (Ed.), Slips of the tongue and language production (pp. 163–195). Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter.

Gibbs, R. W., & Nayak, N. P. (1989). Psycholinguistic studies on the syntactic behavior of idioms. Cognitive Psychology, 21, 100–138. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(89)90004-2

Kemmer, S. (2003). Schemas and lexical blends. In H. Cuyckens, T. Berg, R. Dirven, & K.-U. Panther (Eds.), Motivation in language: Studies in honor of Günter Radden (pp. 69–97). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Konopka, A. E., & Bock, K. (2009). Lexical or syntactic control of sentence formulation? Structural generalizations from idiom production. Cognitive Psychology, 58(1), 68–101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2008.05.002

Langlotz, A. (2006). Idiomatic creativity: A cognitive-linguistic model of idiom-representation and idiom-variation in English. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.17

McGlone, M. S., Glucksberg, S., & Cacciari, C. (1994). Semantic productivity and idiom comprehension. Discourse Processes, 17, 167–190. https://doi.org/10.1080/01638539409544865

Moon, R. (1998). Fixed expressions and idioms in English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Schröder, D. (2013). The syntactic flexibility of idioms: A corpus-based approach. Munich: AVM.

Sinclair, J. (Ed.). (2011). Collins COBUILD idioms dictionary. Harper Collins.

Strathy Language Unit. (2013). Strathy corpus of Canadian English: 50 million words, 1970–2010. Retrieved from: https://www.english-corpora.org/can/

Titone, D. A., & Connine, C. M. (1994). Descriptive norms for 171 idiomatic expressions: Familiarity, compositionality, predictability, and literality. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 9(4), 247–270. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327868ms0904_1

Wulff, S. (2008). Rethinking idiomaticity: A usage-based approach. London/New York: Continuum.

Downloads

Published

2020-12-28

Issue

Section

Vol 7 No 2 (2020)

How to Cite

Geeraert, K. ., Newman, J., & Baayen, R. H. . (2020). Variation Within Idiomatic Variation: Exploring the Differences Between Speakers and Idioms. East European Journal of Psycholinguistics , 7(2), 9-27. https://doi.org/10.29038/eejpl.2020.7.2.gee