The Metonymicity of Grammar

Cognitive Linguistics Upon (De)Compositionality and Fixedness: A Critical Overview

Nunberg, Sag and Wasow (1994: 498) departed from the earlier understanding of compositionality as a binary phenomenon, which defined constructions either as idioms or as non-idioms; in contrast, they defined compositionality as “the degree to which the phrasal meaning, once known, can be analyzed in terms of the contributions of the idiom parts”. Various studies have provided empirical support in favor of this “compositional view” of language. 

To name just a few, Cacciari and Tabossi (1988), Glucksberg (1993), Peterson and Burgess (1993), and Titone and Connine (1994) observed that even in highly non-compositional constructions, the semantics of the component words are activated at least to some degree. Specifically, this observation suggests that the literal meanings of words facilitate the comprehension of idioms to the extent that they semantically overlap with the idiomatic meaning (Gibbs and Nayak 1989; Gibbs, Nayak, Bolton & Keppel 1989).

According to Baldwin (2004: 1) multiword expressions (MWEs) (including English phrasal verbs) are “idiosyncratic interpretations that cross word boundaries”. MWEs are sensitive to morphological and syntactic flexibility, which enable the language user to conceive their meaning (ibid: 1). Baldwin (2004: 7) further proposes that multiword expressions, whose degree of idiomaticity ranges from the literal to the idiomatic axis, can be interpreted by virtue of “decompositionality”, termed as “the degree to which the semantics of an MWE can be ascribed to those of its parts”.

At this point, I should mention that both traditional and Cognitive approaches to idiomatic expressions consider fixedness as an important factor studying multiword expressions like phrasal verbs. To be more precise, “fixed expression” is a very general but convenient term, adopted from Alexander (1978, 1979), Carter (1987) and others, and used to cover several kinds of a phrasal lexeme, a phraseological unit, or a multi-word lexical item. As Moon (2003: 2) observes these units include: i) frozen collocations, ii) grammatically ill-formed collocations, iii) proverbs, iv) routine formulae, v) sayings and, vi) similies. 

Moreover, other scholars assumed that fixed-form expressions, whether literal or figurative in interpretation, are simply lexical entries precisely like those assumed for standard literal interpretation of individual words (Swinney & Cutler 1979; Di Sciullo & Williams 1987). Finally, in its simplest description, a fixed figurative expression is a string of words for which the interpretation is not (entirely) derived from the individual meanings of the words comprising the string (even if there can be seen some historical linkage of the literal words to the overall expression); this non-literal interpretation has become “fixed” in the language by use (Hillert & Swinney 1999: 2).

The latter remark suggests that an idiom compound's meaning may be: a) entirely independent from the “literal” meanings of the individual words in the compound, b) partially related to one of the “literal” meanings of the compound via either structural or semantic analysis, or c) entirely ambiguous, having both a “literal” and a “figurative” meaning (Hillert & Swinney 1999: 3). For example, the English compound “redhead” is composed of: i) the structurally decomposable literal meaning involving a head that is red in color (perhaps from sunburn or dye), ii) the partially decomposable meaning of “having hair that is red”, and iii) the non-decomposable figurative meaning of “hot tempered”, a meaning derivable only by knowledge of personality features stereotypically associated with persons who have red-hair (ibid: 3). The latter meaning has come to be fixed by use, and is thus idiomatic. In similar manner, if we consider the case of the English compound “horse-laugh”, we will observe that with the exception of the small class of individuals who deal closely with horses (and who might attribute the human descriptor of laughter to a horse), there is no literal (decomposable or otherwise) interpretation of this compound; Yet the fixed idiom is easily understood to mean a loud annoying (braying) laugh by a human (ibid: 3).

Furthermore, according to Wray (2002) phrasal verbs once conventionalized belong to the class of fixed expressions. Fixed expressions refer to “specific combinations of two or more words that are typically used to express a specific concept. […] The defining feature of a FE is that it is a word combination, stored in the Mental Lexicon of native speakers that as a whole refers to a [linguistic] concept. This makes FEs non-compositional in the sense that the combination and structure of their elements need not be computed afresh, but can be retrieved from the Mental Lexicon. However, the degree of lexical and syntactic fixedness can vary” (Sprenger 2003: 4).

In this regard, the notion “fixed expression” encompasses more than idioms. As Booij (2009: 221) points out idiomatic expressions have one or more non-compositional properties, whereas a fixed expression may be completely compositional, but nevertheless stored because it is a conventional name for a particular concept. This view argues that linguistic knowledge encompasses both knowledge of the grammatical system of a language, and knowledge of the conventions involved in using that language (ibid: 221).

Moreover, Gibbs (1995: 99) claims that the most important problem concerning the analyzability of idioms derives from the traditional view according to which idioms are non-compositional and hence, their meaning cannot be predictable from an analysis of the meanings of their parts.  Gibbs (1995: 103) attempted to approach idiomaticity by relating it to fixedness; in particular, he claims that it is of utmost importance to consider that most languages have many idioms with similar figurative meanings. For instance, American English has many idioms referring to the concept of getting angry, such as “blow your stack”, “hit the ceiling”, “blow off steam”, “bite your head off”, “get pissed off” (ibid: 103).

Gibbs (1995: 104) further criticizes traditional approaches to idiomaticity stating that there is no particular reason why we should create and use so many different expressions to convey roughly the same idea or concept. He also disagrees with the view that each phrase’s meaning is supposedly determined by separate historical situations that have evolved into pragmatic conventions of use, implying that the link between an idiom and its figurative meaning is arbitrary and cannot be predicted from the meanings of its individual words (ibid: 104).

Contrary to the traditional view, Gibbs criticizes traditional approaches by pointing out that the figurative meanings of idioms might well be motivated by people’s conceptual knowledge that is itself constituted by metaphor (ibid: 104). For instance, the idiom “John spilled the beans” maps our knowledge of someone tipping over a container of beans to that of a person revealing some previously hidden secret; English speakers understand “spill the beans” to mean “reveal the secret” because there are underlying conceptual metaphors, such as THE MIND IS A CONTAINER and IDEAS ARE PHYSICAL ENTITIES, that structure their conceptions of minds, secrets, and disclosure (Lakoff & Johnson 1980). Even though the existence of conceptual metaphors does not predict that certain idioms or conventional expressions must appear in the language (i.e. “spill the beans” vs. “spill the peas”), the presence of these independent conceptual metaphors by which we make sense of experience partially explains why specific phrases, like “spill the beans” are used to refer to particular events (such as the revealing of secrets) (Gibbs 1995: 104).

Models of Studying English Phrasal Verbs

Traditional (formal) approaches

A) Bolinger (1971)

Intransitive verbs show just as clearly for the adverb, or the particle to attach itself semantically to the noun; for instance, he stands out or he stood apart. English phrasal verbs are defined by virtue of the syntactic properties of the particle; in particular, he claims that particles (such as off and on) form the most typical phrasal verbs and these particles function as adverbs or prepositions (ibid: 76). Particles, which oscillate between preposition and adverb, give rise to the so-called prepositional adverbs (ibid: 26). For instance, with prepositional adverbs a sentence like he run away or I walked home is grammatical compared to a sentence like *he run away school, or * I walked home my apartment.

B) Fraser (1976)

 Strong relationships between the verb and the particle show that a verb and a particle may combine in more than one way. For example, in some verb-particle combinations a constituent alteration of meaning results from the presence of the particle and this instance is referred as a type of “systematic combination”[1] (ibid: 5). Within the class of systematic verb-particle combinations there are two types:

1.   Those for which the co-occurrence restrictions on the verb and the particle are exactly the same for those which are not identical, such as drink down wherein the verb-particle combination is used transitively, but the verb alone cannot (ibid: 6).

2.    Combinations like deed over and hand out while instances of systematic verb-particle combinations do not share the same co-occurrence restrictions as the corresponding verbs. For instance:

i) The old man deeded over the estate.

ii)             * The old man deeded the estate.

iii)            Will you please hand out the secret folders?

iv)            * Will you please hand the secret folders? (Ibid: 6)

Cognitive Studies

A) Lindstromberg (1998)

According to this approach, the term phrasal verb or “multi-word verb” refers to verb plus preposition combinations, which are non-literal and more or less idiomatic (ibid: 22). Thus, pick up cannot be regarded as a phrasal verb because both “pick” and “up” have their common literal meanings. Lindstromberg’s (1998: 9) approach to English phrasal verbs places central emphasis on the semantics of prepositions (rather than their syntactic properties as introduced by Bolinger’s (1971) approach), since the preposition enables the language user to locate the subject in relation to the Landmark. In this regard, in, from, toward, by and between are prepositions of path because the Landmark is seen either as a container, or as a surface, or as long and narrow or even as a point on a potential or actual path:

a.          The Landmark as a container:

- In/ out of the room à location

- In/ out/ through the roomà movement along a path

- Throughout/ all through the roomà distribution

b. The Landmark as a surface:

- It’s lying on/ off/ across the carpetà location

- It went onto/ off/ across the carpetà movement along a path

- It scattered papers all across the carpetà distribution

c. The Landmark is seen as long and narrow:

- There’s a ditch along the roadà location

- Go along the roadà movement along a path

- They scattered litter all along the roadà distribution

d. The Landmark is seen as a point on a potential or actual path:

- It’s toward/ at/ away from the schoolà location

- We went to/ from/ via the schoolà movement along a path   (ibid: 13)

The aforementioned examples indicate that Lindstromberg’s (1998) approach to English phrasal verbs is merely based on the properties of the particles. Under this assumption, English phrasal verbs, which occur as the combination of the verb with extremely common particles (like those of the previous examples), can be further treated as perfective[3] phrasal verbs (Lindstromberg 1998: 23).

Moreover, Lindstromberg (1998) argues for the semantic classifications of phrasal verbs by virtue of three criteria: idiomaticity, number of elements and kind of metaphor. First of all, idiomaticity classifies phrasal verbs into non-idiomatic (put up your hand), semi-idiomatic (knock someone out) and idiomatic (put up with someone) (ibid: 244). The second criterion of classification refers to the number of metaphorically used elements. In particular, a zero element implies that in an utterance like cut up the onions, only the particle up is used non-literally; on the other hand, in an utterance like his remark cut her up, the verb cut in combination with the particle up is used non-literally (ibid: 244). In this case, the semantic interaction between “his remark” and the phrasal verb contributes to the metaphorization of the whole sentence (IDEAS/ ARGUMENTS are WAR).

The last criterion of Lindstromberg’s (1998) semantic classification deals with the so-called “kind of metaphor”. In other words, phrasal verbs are further categorized into two types: a) those deriving from a stereotypical image of an event, an activity or, a sequence of events, such as bump someone off  [=kill someone] and, b) those whose prepositions or particles express an abstract conventional metaphor, such as she turned him down (ibid: 245-246).

2) Rudzka-Ostyn's (2003) model

English phrasal verbs are a special type of expressions, wherein the particle or the preposition is attached to the verb. In particular, Rudzka-Ostyn (2003: 3) claims that if the meaning of the verb is known and if the meaning of the particle is spatial, the phrasal verb is generally easy to understand. In this regard, Rudza-Ostyn’s model of studying English phrasal verbs indicates that the spatial, prototypical meaning of the most frequent prepositions or particles is illustrated as across, along, away, back, by, down, in, inside, into, off, on, over, through, under and up (ibid: 3-4).

However, Rudza-Ostyn (2003) points out that there are two basic restrictions regarding the formation of English phrasal verbs. More precisely, the first restriction derives from the place of the particle according to which the more figurative a phrasal verb is, the more it forms a tight unit, and the less figurative a phrasal verb is, the verb and the particle can be split (ibid: 1). The second restriction deals with the passivization of phrasal verbs since only when there is a flow of energy from an agent to an object, phrasal verbs can be used in the passive (ibid: 1).

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[1] The boy bolted his food. à The boy bolted down his food.

   Drink your milk. à Drink down your milk. (Adapted from Fraser 1976: 5)

[2] The phonological shape of the verb indicates that the majority of verbs occurring with particles are monosyllabic, namely [l], [r], [m], or [n], i.e., live, run, make, nestle (Kennedy 1920; Whorf 1964; Fraser 1965).

[3] The term perfective mcomes from the Latin “per”, which means “through” and “-fect” comes from the Latin word “done” or “made”; hence, “perfect” means “done through”, or that something is done or complete (Lindstromberg 1998: 23-24).

C). My study (Tsaroucha 2012; MA dissertation, AUTH) 

i) Phrasal verbs can be studied on the grounds of idiomaticity i) idiomatic expressions are located on a cline of more or less fixedness, in the sense that they extend from literal to more metaphorical meanings and, ii) the idiomatic nature of English phrasal verbs is rooted in (de)compositionality.

ii) The verb-particle combination is subject to a certain kind of blend, wherein the semantics of the particle combine with the semantics of the verb, even if the particle and the verb do not have similar meanings. For instance, if we consider a sentence like let’s take up each problem one at a time, we will observe that the prototypical meaning of the verb take combines with the prototypical meaning of the particle up in such a way that the language user is in a position to interpret the phrasal verb as “to deal with”, rather than as “to raise” or “to begin”. 

iii) A Cognitive continuum of idiomaticity suggests that English phrasal verbs extend from metonymic to more metaphoric readings. On the basis of Gibbs’s (1995: 104) argument, stating that “the figurative meanings of [idiomatic expressions] might well be motivated by people’s conceptual knowledge that is itself constituted by metaphor”, I claim that people’s conceptual knowledge is firstly constituted by metonymy and then extends into metaphor.

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