Spill the beans of idioms : a corpus-based linguistic investigation of English idioms

Abstract EN

An idiom is a phrase or a clause whose meaning, mostly, cannot be deduced from the literal definition; it refers instead to a figurative meaning which is well-mastered by the native speakers in one particular culture.

The present paper is geared towards exploring English idioms on the basis of a large corpus.

The analysis of usage data provides an approximate insight concerning English idiomatic expressions.

This paper also aims at providing a description of idioms which accounts for the syntactic structure, meaning and cultural effects on idioms.

(111) English idiomatic expressions analysed herein rest on the following assumptions: (1) Idioms have a mercury-like nature; it is not easy to find a rule that embodies all idioms as far as form and structure are concerned.

(2) Tracing back the origin of idioms helps to grasp the meaning of idioms in one single culture.

Results show that though the present paper is an attempt to come closer to a syntactic, semantic and pragmatic typology of idioms, still idioms cannot be shaped due to the fact that they are not only linguistically-based but also culturally-based, i.e.

they have an ad hoc usage.

The paper also provides some suggestions on how to master idioms on the part of English foreign learners.

Idioms remain but a field which is full of surprises for researchers and scholars.