Idioms Structural and Psychological Perspectives

Idioms have always aroused the curiosity of linguists and there is a long tradition in the study of idioms, especially within the fields of lexicology and lexicography. Without denying the importance of this tradition, this volume presents an overview of recent idiom research outside the immediate domain of lexicology/lexicography. The chapters address the status of idioms in recent formal and experimental linguistic theorizing. Interdisciplinary in scope, the contributions are written by psycholinguists and theoretical and computational linguists who take mutual advantage of progress in all disciplines. Linguists supply the facts and analyses psycholinguists base their models and experiments on; psycholinguists in turn confront linguistic models with psycholinguistic findings. Computational linguists build natural language processing systems on the basis of models and frameworks provided by theoretical linguists and, sometimes psycholinguists, and set up large corpora to test linguistic hypotheses. Besides the fascination for idioms that make up such a large part of our knowledge of language, interdisciplinarity is one of the attractions of investigations in idiomatic language and language processing.

Contents: M. Everaert, E-J. van der Linden, A. Schenk, R. Schreuder, Introduction. A. Abeillé , The Flexibility of French Idioms: A Representation with Lexicalized Tree Adjoining Grammar. C. Cacciari, S. Glucksberg, Imagining Idiomatic Expressions: Literal or Figurative Meanings? D. Geeraerts, Specialization and Reinterpretation in Idioms. F. van Gestel, EN BLOC Insertion. R.W. Gibbs, Jr., Idiomaticity and Human Cognition. P. Drew, E. Holt, Idiomatic Expressions and Their Role in the Organization of Topic Transition in Conversation. R. Jackendoff, The Boundaries of the Lexicon. I. Mel'cuk, Phrasemes in Language and Phraseology in Lingusitics. T. Nicolas, Semantics of Idiom Modification. A. Schenk, The Syntactic Behavior of Idioms. P. Tabossi, F. Zardon, The Activation of Idiomatic Meaning. M.E.C. van de Voort, W. Vonk, You Don't Die Immediately When You Kick an Empty Bucket: A Processing View on Semantic and Syntactic Characteristics of Idioms. H. Zeevat, Idiomatic Blocking and the Elsewhere Principle.