Idioms and exceptionality

Nik Gisborne and Dick Hudson

LAGB Leeds September 2010

Idioms are exceptional

E.g. kick the bucket • exception to general compositionality:

– it means ‘die’, not ‘kick the bucket’

• exception to general syntax:– no passive: *The bucket was kicked.– no tough movement: *The bucket was hard to

kick– etc.

Our questions

• Why are such exceptions possible?– Does default inheritance help?

• How are idioms stored in relation to their constituent lexemes?– Do the ‘sub-lexemes’ of Word Grammar help?

• How are idioms organized syntactically?– Does dependency structure help?– Do we need phrases?

Kinds of idiom

Nunberg, Sag and Wasow 1994 distinguish:• ‘idiomatic phrases’(IdP)

– e.g. kick the bucket

– rigid syntax

• ‘idiomatically combining expressions’ (IdCE)– e.g. bury the hatchet

– some syntactic freedom • e.g. The hatchet was buried.

More recent research in linguistics

Nunberg at al’s contrast has been explored:• George Horn (2003): IdCEs are syntactically

regular if the parts have regular theta roles.• Espinal & Mateu (2010): IdP vs IdCE is too rigid,

e.g. laugh ones head off is part IdP, part IdCE.• Jackendoff (1997, 2008): accepts IdP vs IdCE.

– Influential player.

– Suggests a formal analysis.

IdP or IdCE?

• Is it likely that there are just two kinds of idiom?

• Maybe there are degrees of opacity?– most opaque, e.g. kick the bucket– less opaque, e.g. bury the hatchet– least opaque, e.g. laugh ones head off

• But how to measure opacity?– Does a network analysis help?

Jackendoff: an IdP

NB special role of head word!

Doesn’t contribute at all to meaning.

Jackendoff: An IdCE

NB This is the only link between

bury and the hatchet.

Jackendoff’s analysis

• IdP: totally rigid syntax– but: kicked the proverbial bucket

• IdCE: totally free syntactic order– but: *They found the hatchet then buried it.– and excludes: buried the proverbial hatchet

• IdCE: requires meaning:syntax = 1:1– e.g. bury (‘reconcile’) the hatchet (‘a

disagreement’)‘Metaphorical

semantic composition’

Metaphorical semantic composition

• Isn’t sufficient for IdCE– raise (‘cause’) hell (‘disturbance’) isn’t an

IdCE (Postal).

• Isn’t necessary for IdCE– let (‘reveal’) the cat (‘the secret’) out of the bag

(??)

• Isn’t necessary for literal meaning– do (‘cartwheel’) a cartwheel (‘cartwheel’)

His example!

Research in psycholinguistics (1)

• How does activation affect idioms?

• How are idioms represented?– NOT as single words– But as phrases with a single entry

• ‘The hybrid theory’ – Cutting and Bock (1997)– Superlemma theory (Sprenger et al 2006)

Cutting and Bock (1997)Syntax is

independent of words.

Superlemmas

NB model of activation, not

structure.

Shows syntactic relations among

parts. (But how?)

Research in psycholinguistics (2)

• We access conceptual metaphors in idioms. – e.g. ‘anger is heat’ for blow one’s stack , but not jump

down someone’s throat

– Gibbs, Bogdanovich, Sykes and Barr (1998)

• We process idiom syntax normally. – Peterson, Burgess, Dell and Eberhard (2001)

• Literal word meanings become active during idiom production. – Sprenger, Levelt and Kempen (2006).

To summarise, …

• Idioms have a single entry in memory.

• They contain ordinary lexemes.

• They involve ordinary metaphor.

• They have ordinary syntax.– But abnormal linkage to meaning– So syntax may be abnormally limited.

Word Grammar

1984 1990 2007 2010 2010

Part 1: How the mind worksPart 2: How language worksPart 3: How English works

What Word Grammar offers

• Default inheritance– allows exceptions

• Sub-lexemes– allows partial differences within a lexeme

• Dependency structure– allows words to relate directly

• Network structure– explains spreading activation and relatedness

For example: tall man

tall man

TALL

sense

> typical height

sense

man

tall man

height1.75m sense

dependent

height> 1.75m

referent

MAN‘isa’

token

stored type/lexeme

Default inheritance allows exceptions

I.e. instances may have exceptional properties

• e.g. tall overrides the default height.

• Typically, a dependent enriches the head’s sense.– and may override default properties.– Any property can be overridden.

• e.g. fake diamonds just look like diamonds

So exceptionality ranges …

• from zero– kick a ball

• through partial– kick up a fuss

• to total– kick the bucket

[cf morphology: walked]

[cf vowel-change: ran]

[cf suppletion: went]

Theoretical point

• Default inheritance is different from unification.– Unification is blocked by conflict.

• But default inheritance is widely accepted in AI models of cognition.

• And it explains the prototype effects found by psychologists.

Sub-lexemes

• Lexemes are in a conceptual taxonomy:– e.g. TAKE isa full verb isa verb isa word

• Each word token isa some lexeme.

• So ‘sub-lexeme isa lexeme’ is permitted– e.g. TAKE/off isa TAKE isa verb …– like TAKE: TAKE/off inflects to took– unlike TAKE: TAKE/off is intransitive and …

Sub-lexemes in idioms

• KICK/bucket isa KICK

• Syntax:– like KICK: it needs an object– unlike KICK: this must be THE/bucket

• whose complement must be BUCKET/the

• Semantics:– unlike KICK, its sense is ‘die’.

pace Jackendoff …

who rejects this kind of analysis:• 1997:

– “a notational variant of listing a lexical VP”– “clumsy” … “collapses under its own weight”

• 2008: – “no non-theory-internal reason to concentrate

all the meaning in one morpheme”• but his own analysis locates meaning on head!

Jackendoff: an IdP

NB special role of head word!

Two idioms in Word Grammar

KICK

KICK/bucket

KICK/up

THE BUCKET

UP

A/fuss FUSS/a

o

•

c

•

c

•

o

•

c

•

kick

sense create dust

sense

KICK/fuss

sense

diecreate a

disturbance

sense

NB ‘die’ is separated from ‘kick’ by many links. NB direct link from

‘create a disturbance’ to ‘kick’

NB link from ‘fuss’ to ‘disturbance’ (not

shown)

IdPs and IdCEs in WG

• IdPs and IdCEs use ordinary syntax.• Their head words have exceptional senses.• The network shows how close the idiomatic

sense is to the literal sense.– So there’s no need for any other IdP/IdCE contrast.

• We speakers can vary the syntax as we want.– But there’s no point in varying it if the parts are

unrelated to the idiomatic meaning.

Conclusion

• The IdP/IdCE contrast has no theoretical status.

• The range of possibilities found is as expected given:– default inheritance– sub-lexemes for syntactic and semantic detail– dependents as semantic modifiers– network structure

Thank you

• This slide show can be found at

www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/talks.htm