Legeny, Viola (2018) Idioms in Scots. MPhil(R) thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/8694/ Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten:Theses http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] V. Legeny Idioms in Scots Idioms in Scots Viola Legeny Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy School of Critical Studies College of Arts University of Glasgow September 2017 1 V. Legeny Idioms in Scots Abstract Despite much research and a great variety of literature on the subject of idioms, the borders of idiomaticity seem very difficult to define. This thesis aims to study how far prototype theory can assist us in the identification of idiom. By gathering and analysing the characteristics of idioms, it is possible to extrapolate gradience where certain features are more, or less prototypical thereby creating a scale of idioms instead of a clear-cut definition. The Scots material is suggested here as a case study: a language variety that is under- researched. This work analysis idioms on four levels: Function, Structure, Lexical and semantic levels. A methodology for a suggested extension of the idiom section of the Historical Thesaurus of Scots is also presented. Apart from adding to current research in Scots, this thesis also provides methodologies for gradience that can be applied to other languages too. 2 V. Legeny Idioms in Scots Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................. 5 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 6 An overview of this thesis ................................................................................................................... 6 Research questions ............................................................................................................................. 6 What is an idiom? ............................................................................................................................... 7 The working definition of idiom in this thesis................................................................................... 10 The evolution of the notion of idioms .............................................................................................. 11 On Scots Idioms................................................................................................................................. 15 On William Graham: the author of SWB ........................................................................................... 16 The pioneer Scots Word Book .......................................................................................................... 16 2. Methodology ..................................................................................................................................... 18 The Pilot Historical Thesaurus of Scots ............................................................................................. 18 Stage 1 ............................................................................................................................................... 19 Stage 2 ............................................................................................................................................... 21 Near-synonyms recorded.................................................................................................................. 22 Stage 3 ............................................................................................................................................... 23 Stage 4 ............................................................................................................................................... 24 Stage 5 ............................................................................................................................................... 24 The ten PHiTS idioms selected for analysis in this thesis .................................................................. 25 Idioms collected for this thesis ......................................................................................................... 25 Grading the characteristics of idioms ............................................................................................... 26 Grading idioms .................................................................................................................................. 27 3. The Findings ...................................................................................................................................... 30 Expectations ...................................................................................................................................... 31 Function Level ................................................................................................................................... 31 Structure level ................................................................................................................................... 33 Lexical level ....................................................................................................................................... 34 Semantic Level .................................................................................................................................. 35 Summary ........................................................................................................................................... 35 4.Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... 37 Bibliography ...................................................................................................................................... 41 3 V. Legeny Idioms in Scots Index of tables Table 1. The definition characteristics of 'idiom' in the BFO .................................................................. 9 Table 2. Possible characteristics of Scots idioms .................................................................................. 10 Table 3. Work stages of the PHiTS idiom section ................................................................................. 19 Table 4. SWB-list phrases omitted when creating the PHiTS idiom collection ..................................... 20 Table 6. Douplicate idioms in the SWB list ........................................................................................... 21 Table 7. Exemplification of the representation of idioms in PHiTS state 2 .......................................... 21 Table 8. Idioms in the PHiTS list from DSL in addition to those from te SWB ...................................... 23 Table 9. Semantic categorisation of PHiTS idiom 40. in the ST............................................................. 24 Table 10. The ten PHiTS idioms selected for this thesis ....................................................................... 25 Table 11. Function level analysis of idiom no 42. ................................................................................. 27 Table 12. The grades for the function analysis of idiom 42. ................................................................. 27 Table 13. The sum of the function level grades of idiom no 42. .......................................................... 28 Table 14. The structure level grades for idiom no 42. .......................................................................... 28 Table 15. The lexical level grades for idiom no 42. ............................................................................... 28 Table 16. The semantic level grades for idiom no 42. .......................................................................... 28 Table 17. The summary of the grades of idiom no 42. ......................................................................... 29 Table 18. Summary of linguistic levels .................................................................................................. 30 Table 19. Findings of part of speech analysis on idioms ....................................................................... 31 Table 20. Findings of part of speech combinations in idioms ............................................................... 32 Table 21. Findings on number of constituents of idioms ..................................................................... 33 Table 22. Findings on syntactic phrase analysis of idioms .................................................................... 33 Table 23. Findings on syntactic phrase combinations of idioms .......................................................... 33 Table 24. Findings on the number of syntactic phrases in idioms .......................................................