Dispensing with Unwanted Polysemy: Verbal Idioms and the Lexicon

Jan Wiślicki

doi:10.5617/osla.6675

Abstract

The paper focuses on verbal idioms and their place in the lexicon. I discuss their morphosyntactic properties and effects observed for copredication. The data show that verbal idioms can be neither stored as atomic items, nor can their parts be treated as polysemous, i.e. as including “standard” and idiomatic meaning. I argue that a plausible result can be achieved by combining the framework of Distributed Morphology with Chomsky’s recent version of cyclic derivation. Viewed from that angle, idioms can be treated as emerging from derivational layers yielding a kind of structural coercion in the sense of Harley & Noyer (2000).

Highlights

JAN WIŚLICKI University of Warsaw abstract The paper focuses on verbal idioms and their place in the lexicon
verbal idioms (VIs) show a typically atomic behaviour, disallowing straightforward composition, blocking movement and co-indexing its parts with non-idiomatic pronouns. While these problems would not arise had idioms been taken as atomic lexical items (LIs), further data from modification and the distribution of case show that this is not possible
The general conclusion is that we need a machinery which is able to yield the structure of VIs and close them off within an atom

Summary

Introduction

JAN WIŚLICKI University of Warsaw abstract The paper focuses on verbal idioms and their place in the lexicon. Viewed from that angle, idioms can be treated as emerging from derivational layers yielding a kind of structural coercion in the sense of Harley & Noyer (2000). In his recent work, Cooper (2017) treats coercion as a mean for keeping chaos emerging in natural languages under (partial) control. A closer look into such expressions, especially into their morphosyntactic properties, unearths quite severe problems in assigning them the proper status in the lexicon. These primary observations give rise to further steps. The general conclusion is that VIs deliver strong arguments supporting a programmatic approach to lexicon

Objectives

Conclusion