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A Corpus-Based Investigation Of View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ResearchArchive at Victoria University of Wellington A CORPUS-BASED INVESTIGATION OF IDIOMATIC MULTIWORD UNITS by Lynn E. Grant A thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Applied Linguistics Victoria University of Wellington 2003 ABSTRACT Idioms – a type of multiword unit (MWU) – are defined as being non-compositional and in general cannot be understood by adding together the meanings of the individual words that comprise the MWU. Because of this, they present a particular challenge to students who speak English as a second- or foreign-language (ESL/EFL). As a teacher of second-language (L2) learners, it is just that challenge which has motivated this study. Specifically, there were two main aims of the thesis. In order to know how to teach idioms to ESL/EFL learners, we – as language teachers – need to know how to define and explain them. Therefore, the first aim of the study was to either find an English (L1) definition of an idiom which could clearly distinguish one type from another, and an idiom from a non-idiom, or to develop a new definition. Having not found such a definition, a new definition was put forward, dividing MWUs presently known as idioms into three new groups – core idioms, figuratives, and ONCEs (one non- compositional element). The L1 perspective was adopted for the definition as an L2 perspective would involve considerably more variables. The second aim was to develop a comprehensive list of one of the three new groups – core idioms – and then try to establish frequency, using a corpus search. A number of steps were taken to compile this list, involving an examination of several sources of written and spoken English. The result was that when the criteria established to define a core idiom – being both non-compositional and non-figurative – were strictly applied to the large collection of MWUs presently known as ‘idioms’, the figure was reduced to only 104 MWUs deemed to be either core idioms or ‘borderline figuratives’ and i ‘borderline ONCEs’. Next the British National Corpus (BNC), a corpus of 100 million words, was searched for occurrences of these 104 core idioms and borderlines to establish their frequency. The result of the corpus search showed that none of the core idioms occurs frequently enough to get into the most frequent 5,000 words of English. However, as the motivation to do the study was the desire to find a better way to teach idiomatic MWUs, a brief discussion followed with suggestions for the teaching and learning of these idiomatic MWUs. Finally, some methodological implications and suggestions for future research were put forward, looking at further research which would advance the field of second-language acquisition (SLA) related to the learning of idiomatic MWUs. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the following people for assisting me in a variety of ways throughout my study at Victoria University of Wellington: • First and foremost, my supervisors Professor Paul Nation and Professor Laurie Bauer for their excellent supervision involving generosity with their time, as well as invaluable advice, guidance and encouragement, given with great patience and good humour. • The Research Committee of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, for supporting me with Grants. • Fellow PhD colleagues at Victoria University of Wellington who have provided moral support and lively debate, and helped by finding resources, books, articles – in particular, John Macalister, Dianne Bardsley, and Nany Kurnia – as well as Administrative staff who arranged office space during my many visits to Wellington. • Professor Graeme Kennedy for his advice on corpora. • My Wellington ‘family’ – Philippa, Bill, Morgan and Grace – who accommodated and fed me during my numerous trips to Wellington. • Colleagues in my workplace, the School of Languages at the Auckland University of Technology, for their interest and support. My thanks in particular to my Head of School, Associate Professor Ron Holt, for allowing the flexibility of teaching hours, the financial support which allowed research time out of the classroom, and help with technical equipment and programmes. • Friends, colleagues, and neighbours – in particular Rosemary Wette, Darryl Hocking, Gay and Tim Devlin, Brian Paltridge, Jude Buckler and Graeme iii Mackay, Alison and Hugo Hoffmann, Jude Day and Ron Griffin, Andrew, Donald and Stuart Mackay, Clare Conway, Claudia and Callum Danby-Scott, Michael Harland, Lily Lim, Sue Knox – who acted as ‘inter-rater reliability testers’, collected idioms from newspapers and from teenagers, donated books on idioms, provided invaluable technical support with the computer, as well as moral support and encouragement. • And last but not least, my family, in particular my daughter Anthea for her patience and understanding, and my sisters, Merle Ferguson and Brenda Grant, for their moral and financial support. It is the support of all of the above that has enabled the completion of this study, and for this I remain eternally grateful. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 10 1.1 BACKGROUND ...................................................................................................10 1.2 FIRST STAGE OF THE STUDY..........................................................................12 1.3 SECOND STAGE OF THE STUDY.....................................................................13 CHAPTER 2 DEFINING IDIOMS ................................................................................ 15 2.1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................15 2.2 WORD COMBINATIONS....................................................................................15 2.2.1 Collocations....................................................................................................16 2.2.2 Collocations vs idioms....................................................................................18 2.3 IDIOMS AND IDIOMATICITY...........................................................................19 2.4 TYPES OF IDIOMS ..............................................................................................22 2.5 CLASSIFICATIONS OF IDIOMS........................................................................25 2.5.1 Semantic classifications of idioms......................................................................25 2.5.2 Syntactic classifications of idioms .................................................................28 2.5.3 Functional classifications of idioms ...............................................................30 2.6 A SCALE OF IDIOMATICITY ............................................................................32 2.7 THE LACK OF A CLEAR DEFINITION ............................................................34 2.8 IDENTIFYING CRITERIA FOR DEFINING IDIOMS.......................................36 2.8.1 Non-compositionality:....................................................................................36 2.8.2 Part compositionality:.....................................................................................37 2.8.3 Institutionalisation: .........................................................................................37 2.8.4 Frozenness: .....................................................................................................37 2.9 THE ‘COMPOSITIONALITY’ OF LANGUAGE................................................41 2.9.1 Problems with ‘compositionality’ ..................................................................42 2.9.2 The ‘naïve approach’ to compositionality......................................................44 2.10 ESTABLISHING NEW CRITERIA FOR DEFINING IDIOMS........................46 2.11 FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE ..............................................................................47 2.11.1 Defining ‘figurative’.......................................................................................47 2.11.2 Figurative language vs idioms........................................................................50 2.12 THE NEW DEFINITION OF AN ‘IDIOM’........................................................52 2.13 CONCLUSION....................................................................................................53 CHAPTER 3 DEVELOPING AN ‘IDIOM TEST’ ........................................................ 55 3.1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................55 3.2 THE CRITERIA FOR DEFINING AN ‘IDIOM’ .................................................55 3.3 THE ‘IDIOM TEST’..............................................................................................56 3.3.1 Applying the test to MWUs presently classified as idioms............................57 3.3.2 Issues to take into consideration when applying the ‘test’ .............................58 3.4 TESTING THE ‘IDIOM TEST’ ............................................................................59 3.4.1 Test 1..............................................................................................................60 3.4.2 Test 2..............................................................................................................63
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