engleski

Creativity and recontextualization: Lexical substitution in English verbal idioms

Modifications of idioms are widespread across different types of discourse. Furthermore, corpus- based studies have shown that the most common type of modification is lexical substitution. When it comes to verb substitution in creative use, corpus data shows there are two types of modifications. In one, the idiomatic component is replaced by source-domain verbs (e.g. skyrocket through the ranks ; base form: rise through the ranks). In the other type of modification, an idiom is recontextualized and the idiomatic component is replaced by target-domain verbs (e.g. defend sth to great lengths ; base form: go to great lengths). Recontextualization raises the question of local constraints on modifications that go beyond the idiomatic meaning. The aim of this paper is to show that substitutions by source-domain verbs and target-domain verbs are subject to different types of local constraints. In addition, the aim is to show that the creation of novel expressions is constrained by the meanings of lexico-grammatical patterns within a given idiom. A study of 100 verbal idioms was conducted in the English Web corpus 2013 (enTenTen13).

idioms ; modifications ; recontextualization ; verb substitution ; English

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