An idiom is a phrase or expression that largely or exclusively carries a figurative or non-literal meaning , rather than making any literal sense. Categorized as formulaic language , an idiomatic expression's meaning is different from the literal meanings of each word inside it. Idioms occur frequently in all languages; in English alone there are an estimated twenty-five thousand idiomatic expressions. Some well known idioms in English are spill the beans (meaning "reveal secret information"), it's raining cats and dogs (meaning "it's raining intensely"), and break a leg (meaning "good luck").
71-448: This is a list of idioms that were recognizable to literate people in the late-19th century, and have become unfamiliar since. As the article list of idioms in the English language notes, a list of idioms can be useful, since the meaning of an idiom cannot be deduced by knowing the meaning of its constituent words. See that article for a fuller discussion of what an idiom is, and what it
142-473: A verb . Idioms tend to confuse those unfamiliar with them; students of a new language must learn its idiomatic expressions as vocabulary. Many natural language words have idiomatic origins but are assimilated and so lose their figurative senses. For example, in Portuguese, the expression saber de coração 'to know by heart', with the same meaning as in English, was shortened to 'saber de cor', and, later, to
213-514: A 'bandwagon' can refer to a collective cause, regardless of context. A word-by-word translation of an opaque idiom will most likely not convey the same meaning in other languages. The English idiom kick the bucket has a variety of equivalents in other languages, such as kopnąć w kalendarz ("kick the calendar") in Polish, casser sa pipe ("to break one’s pipe") in French and tirare le cuoia ("pulling
284-531: A German philologist, and of Heimann Hariton Tiktin (1850–1936), a Romanian linguist. Modern dependency grammars, however, begin primarily with the work of Lucien Tesnière. Tesnière was a Frenchman, a polyglot , and a professor of linguistics at the universities in Strasbourg and Montpellier. His major work Éléments de syntaxe structurale was published posthumously in 1959 – he died in 1954. The basic approach to syntax he developed has at least partially influenced
355-531: A basis for an understanding of meaning compositionality. The Principle of Compositionality can in fact be maintained. Units of meaning are being assigned to catenae, whereby many of these catenae are not constituents. Various studies have investigated methods to develop the ability to interpret idioms in children with various diagnoses including Autism, Moderate Learning Difficulties, Developmental Language Disorder and typically developing weak readers. Dependency grammar Dependency grammar ( DG )
426-447: A hyphen that appears on the right side of the clitic (not shown here) indicates that the clitic is prosodically dependent on the word that appears immediately to its right. A given clitic is often prosodically dependent on its syntactic dependent ( He'll , There's ) or on its head ( would've ). At other times, it can depend prosodically on a word that is neither its head nor its immediate dependent ( Florida's ). Syntactic dependencies are
497-405: A leg is an expression commonly said to wish a person good luck just prior to their giving a performance or presentation, which apparently wishes injury on them. However, the phrase likely comes from a loan translation from a phrase of German and Yiddish origin, which is why it makes no literal sense in English. In linguistics , idioms are usually presumed to be figures of speech contradicting
568-426: A manner that most closely matches the results of standard permutation, substitution, and ellipsis tests for constituents. Etymological considerations also provide helpful clues about the direction of dependencies. A promising principle upon which to base the existence of syntactic dependencies is distribution. When one is striving to identify the root of a given phrase, the word that is most responsible for determining
639-440: A morphological dependency pointing from the determiner to the adjective, whereby this morphological dependency is entirely independent of the syntactic dependencies. Consider further the following French sentences: The masculine subject le chien in (a) demands the masculine form of the predicative adjective blanc , whereas the feminine subject la maison demands the feminine form of this adjective. A morphological dependency that
710-420: A predicate are semantically dependent on that predicate. Often, semantic dependencies overlap with and point in the same direction as syntactic dependencies. At times, however, semantic dependencies can point in the opposite direction of syntactic dependencies, or they can be entirely independent of syntactic dependencies. The hierarchy of words in the following examples show standard syntactic dependencies, whereas
781-447: A similar literal meaning. These types of changes can occur only when speakers can easily recognize a connection between what the idiom is meant to express and its literal meaning, thus an idiom like kick the bucket cannot occur as kick the pot . From the perspective of dependency grammar , idioms are represented as a catena which cannot be interrupted by non-idiomatic content. Although syntactic modifications introduce disruptions to
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#1732854921891852-423: A single lexical item that is now largely independent of the literal reading. In phraseology , idioms are defined as a sub-type of phraseme , the meaning of which is not the regular sum of the meanings of its component parts. John Saeed defines an idiom as collocated words that became affixed to each other until metamorphosing into a fossilised term . This collocation of words redefines each component word in
923-400: A slight metaphorical broadening. Another category of idioms is a word having several meanings, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes discerned from the context of its usage. This is seen in the (mostly uninflected) English language in polysemes , the common use of the same word for an activity, for those engaged in it, for the product used, for the place or time of an activity, and sometimes for
994-476: A structure. This situation should be compared with phrase structure . Phrase structure is a one-to-one-or-more correspondence, which means that, for every element in a sentence, there is one or more nodes in the structure that correspond to that element. The result of this difference is that dependency structures are minimal compared to their phrase structure counterparts, since they tend to contain many fewer nodes. These trees illustrate two possible ways to render
1065-564: A word-for-word translation called a calque . Piirainen says that may happen as a result of lingua franca usage in which speakers incorporate expressions from their own native tongue, which exposes them to speakers of other languages. Other theories suggest they come from a shared ancestor-language or that humans are naturally predisposed to develop certain metaphors. The non-compositionality of meaning of idioms challenges theories of syntax. The fixed words of many idioms do not qualify as constituents in any sense. For example: How do we get to
1136-491: Is a class of modern grammatical theories that are all based on the dependency relation (as opposed to the constituency relation of phrase structure ) and that can be traced back primarily to the work of Lucien Tesnière . Dependency is the notion that linguistic units, e.g. words, are connected to each other by directed links. The (finite) verb is taken to be the structural center of clause structure. All other syntactic units (words) are either directly or indirectly connected to
1207-405: Is a predicate in tree (b) that takes bones as its one argument; the semantic dependency points up the tree and therefore runs counter to the syntactic dependency. A similar situation obtains in (c), where the preposition predicate on takes the two arguments the picture and the wall ; one of these semantic dependencies points up the syntactic hierarchy, whereas the other points down it. Finally,
1278-457: Is compatible with other major tenets of theories of grammar. Thus like phrase structure grammars, dependency grammars can be mono- or multistratal, representational or derivational, construction- or rule-based. There are various conventions that DGs employ to represent dependencies. The following schemata (in addition to the tree above and the trees further below) illustrate some of these conventions: The representations in (a–d) are trees, whereby
1349-548: Is due, in part, to the influential work that David Hays did in machine translation at the RAND Corporation in the 1950s and 1960s. Dependency-based systems are increasingly being used to parse natural language and generate tree banks . Interest in dependency grammar is growing at present, international conferences on dependency linguistics being a relatively recent development ( Depling 2011 , Depling 2013 , Depling 2015 , Depling 2017 , Depling 2019 Archived 2019-03-06 at
1420-471: Is entirely independent of the syntactic dependencies therefore points again across the syntactic hierarchy. Morphological dependencies play an important role in typological studies . Languages are classified as mostly head-marking ( Sam work-s ) or mostly dependent-marking ( these houses ), whereby most if not all languages contain at least some minor measure of both head and dependent marking. Prosodic dependencies are acknowledged in order to accommodate
1491-509: Is irreversible, but its meaning is straightforwardly derived from its components. Idioms possess varying degrees of mobility. Whereas some idioms are used only in a routine form, others can undergo syntactic modifications such as passivization, raising constructions, and clefting , demonstrating separable constituencies within the idiom. Mobile idioms , allowing such movement, maintain their idiomatic meaning where fixed idioms do not: Many fixed idioms lack semantic composition , meaning that
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#17328549218911562-442: Is not. In addition, the often-obscure references or shared values that lie behind an idiom will themselves lose applicability over time, although the surviving literature of the period relies on their currency for full understanding. Wood, James , ed. (1907). The Nuttall Encyclopædia . London and New York: Frederick Warne. Idiom Many idiomatic expressions were meant literally in their original use, but occasionally
1633-600: Is real, then one is likely to go down the path of phrase structure grammar, while if one rejects this division, then one must consider the verb as the root of all structure, and so go down the path of dependency grammar. The following frameworks are dependency-based: Link grammar is similar to dependency grammar, but link grammar does not include directionality between the linked words, and thus does not describe head-dependent relationships. Hybrid dependency/phrase structure grammar uses dependencies between words, but also includes dependencies between phrasal nodes – see for example
1704-512: Is translated as "in the same boat", and it carries the same figurative meaning as the equivalent idiom in English. Another example would be the Japanese yojijukugo 一石二鳥 ( isseki ni chō ), which is translated as "one stone, two birds". This is, of course, analogous to "to kill two birds with one stone" in English. According to the German linguist Elizabeth Piirainen, the idiom "to get on one's nerves" has
1775-407: Is used to illustrate a scrambling discontinuity : The a-trees on the left show projectivity violations (= crossing lines), and the b-trees on the right demonstrate one means of addressing these violations. The displaced constituent takes on a word as its head that is not its governor . The words in red mark the catena (=chain) of words that extends from the root of the displaced constituent to
1846-513: The Construction Grammar framework. A relatively recent development in the syntactic analysis of idioms departs from a constituent-based account of syntactic structure, preferring instead the catena -based account. The catena unit was introduced to linguistics by William O'Grady in 1998. Any word or any combination of words that are linked together by dependencies qualifies as a catena. The words constituting idioms are stored as catenae in
1917-481: The Quranic Arabic Dependency Treebank . The derivation trees of tree-adjoining grammar are dependency structures, although the full trees of TAG rendered in terms of phrase structure, so in this regard, it is not clear whether TAG should be viewed more as a dependency or phrase structure grammar. There are major differences between the grammars just listed. In this regard, the dependency relation
1988-462: The Wayback Machine ). Dependency is a one-to-one correspondence: for every element (e.g. word or morph) in the sentence, there is exactly one node in the structure of that sentence that corresponds to that element. The result of this one-to-one correspondence is that dependency grammars are word (or morph) grammars. All that exist are the elements and the dependencies that connect the elements into
2059-532: The governor of that constituent. Discontinuities are then explored in terms of these catenae. The limitations on topicalization, wh -fronting, scrambling, and extraposition can be explored and identified by examining the nature of the catenae involved. Traditionally, DGs have treated the syntactic functions (= grammatical functions, grammatical relations ) as primitive. They posit an inventory of functions (e.g. subject, object, oblique, determiner, attribute, predicative, etc.). These functions can appear as labels on
2130-405: The principle of compositionality . That compositionality is the key notion for the analysis of idioms emphasized in most accounts of idioms. This principle states that the meaning of a whole should be constructed from the meanings of the parts that make up the whole. In other words, one should be in a position to understand the whole if one understands the meanings of each of the parts that make up
2201-505: The word-group and becomes an idiomatic expression . Idioms usually do not translate well; in some cases, when an idiom is translated directly word-for-word into another language, either its meaning is changed or it is meaningless. When two or three words are conventionally used together in a particular sequence, they form an irreversible binomial . For example, a person may be left high and dry , but never left dry and high . Not all irreversible binomials are idioms, however: chips and dip
List of English-language idioms of the 19th century - Misplaced Pages Continue
2272-401: The German examples (c) and (d) influences the inflectional suffix that appears on the adjective alt . When the indefinite article ein is used, the strong masculine ending -er appears on the adjective. When the definite article der is used, in contrast, the weak ending -e appears on the adjective. Thus since the choice of determiner impacts the morphological form of the adjective, there is
2343-406: The analysis of languages with free word order, such as Czech or Warlpiri . The notion of dependencies between grammatical units has existed since the earliest recorded grammars, e.g. Pāṇini , and the dependency concept therefore arguably predates that of phrase structure by many centuries. Ibn Maḍāʾ , a 12th-century linguist from Córdoba, Andalusia , may have been the first grammarian to use
2414-426: The arrows indicate semantic dependencies: The two arguments Sam and Sally in tree (a) are dependent on the predicate likes , whereby these arguments are also syntactically dependent on likes . What this means is that the semantic and syntactic dependencies overlap and point in the same direction (down the tree). Attributive adjectives, however, are predicates that take their head noun as their argument, hence big
2485-460: The attribution of the literal meaning changed and the phrase itself grew away from its original roots—typically leading to a folk etymology . For instance, the phrase "spill the beans" (meaning to reveal a secret) is first attested in 1919, but has been said to originate from an ancient method of voting by depositing beans in jars, which could be spilled, prematurely revealing the results. Other idioms are deliberately figurative. For example, break
2556-645: The basic commitment to dependency as the relation that is grouping syntactic units. The dependency representations above (and further below) show syntactic dependencies. Indeed, most work in dependency grammar focuses on syntactic dependencies. Syntactic dependencies are, however, just one of three or four types of dependencies. Meaning–text theory , for instance, emphasizes the role of semantic and morphological dependencies in addition to syntactic dependencies. A fourth type, prosodic dependencies, can also be acknowledged. Distinguishing between these types of dependencies can be important, in part because if one fails to do so,
2627-400: The basic task of identifying and discerning the presence and direction of the syntactic dependencies of DGs is no easier or harder than determining the constituent groupings of phrase structure grammars. A variety of heuristics are employed to this end, basic tests for constituents being useful tools; the syntactic dependencies assumed in the trees in this article are grouping words together in
2698-506: The behavior of clitics . A clitic is a syntactically autonomous element that is prosodically dependent on a host. A clitic is therefore integrated into the prosody of its host, meaning that it forms a single word with its host. Prosodic dependencies exist entirely in the linear dimension (horizontal dimension), whereas standard syntactic dependencies exist in the hierarchical dimension (vertical dimension). Classic examples of clitics in English are reduced auxiliaries (e.g. -ll , -s , -ve ) and
2769-411: The bottom of this situation? The fixed words of this idiom (in bold) do not form a constituent in any theory's analysis of syntactic structure because the object of the preposition (here this situation ) is not part of the idiom (but rather it is an argument of the idiom). One can know that it is not part of the idiom because it is variable; for example, How do we get to the bottom of this situation /
2840-402: The claim / the phenomenon / her statement / etc. What this means is that theories of syntax that take the constituent to be the fundamental unit of syntactic analysis are challenged. The manner in which units of meaning are assigned to units of syntax remains unclear. This problem has motivated a tremendous amount of discussion and debate in linguistics circles and it is a primary motivator behind
2911-408: The constellation to be primitive and they then derive the syntactic functions from the constellation. This question about what comes first (the functions or the constellation) is not an inflexible matter. The stances of both grammar types (dependency and phrase structure) are not narrowly limited to the traditional views. Dependency and phrase structure are both fully compatible with both approaches to
List of English-language idioms of the 19th century - Misplaced Pages Continue
2982-412: The degree to which the literal reading of the idiom has a connection to its idiomatic meaning. This is referred to as motivation or transparency . While most idioms that do not display semantic composition generally do not allow non-adjectival modification, those that are also motivated allow lexical substitution. For example, oil the wheels and grease the wheels allow variation for nouns that elicit
3053-423: The dependencies in the tree structures, e.g. The syntactic functions in this tree are shown in green: ATTR (attribute), COMP-P (complement of preposition), COMP-TO (complement of to), DET (determiner), P-ATTR (prepositional attribute), PRED (predicative), SUBJ (subject), TO-COMP (to complement). The functions chosen and abbreviations used in the tree here are merely representative of the general stance of DGs toward
3124-424: The dependency and phrase structure relations (see below). This dependency tree is an "ordered" tree, i.e. it reflects actual word order. Many dependency trees abstract away from linear order and focus just on hierarchical order, which means they do not show actual word order. This constituency (= phrase structure) tree follows the conventions of bare phrase structure (BPS), whereby the words themselves are employed as
3195-456: The dependency hierarchy; dependents appear enclosed in more brackets than their heads. And finally, the indentations like those in (g) are another convention that is sometimes employed to indicate the hierarchy of words. Dependents are placed underneath their heads and indented. Like tree (d), the indentations in (g) abstract away from linear order. The point to these conventions is that they are just that, namely conventions. They do not influence
3266-404: The dependency relation does not, however, prevent one from focusing on linear order. Dependency structures are as capable of exploring word order phenomena as phrase structures. The following trees illustrate this point; they represent one way of exploring discontinuities using dependency structures. The trees suggest the manner in which common discontinuities can be addressed. An example from German
3337-400: The distribution of that phrase as a whole is its root. Traditionally, DGs have had a different approach to linear order (word order) than phrase structure grammars. Dependency structures are minimal compared to their phrase structure counterparts, and these minimal structures allow one to focus intently on the two ordering dimensions. Separating the vertical dimension (hierarchical order) from
3408-646: The focus of most work in DG, as stated above. How the presence and the direction of syntactic dependencies are determined is of course often open to debate. In this regard, it must be acknowledged that the validity of syntactic dependencies in the trees throughout this article is being taken for granted. However, these hierarchies are such that many DGs can largely support them, although there will certainly be points of disagreement. The basic question about how syntactic dependencies are discerned has proven difficult to answer definitively. One should acknowledge in this area, however, that
3479-455: The former. Agreement and concord are therefore manifestations of morphological dependencies. Like semantic dependencies, morphological dependencies can overlap with and point in the same direction as syntactic dependencies, overlap with and point in the opposite direction of syntactic dependencies, or be entirely independent of syntactic dependencies. The arrows are now used to indicate morphological dependencies. The plural houses in (a) demands
3550-732: The horizontal dimension (linear order) is easily accomplished. This aspect of dependency structures has allowed DGs, starting with Tesnière (1959), to focus on hierarchical order in a manner that is hardly possible for phrase structure grammars. For Tesnière, linear order was secondary to hierarchical order insofar as hierarchical order preceded linear order in the mind of a speaker. The stemmas (trees) that Tesnière produced reflected this view; they abstracted away from linear order to focus almost entirely on hierarchical order. Many DGs that followed Tesnière adopted this practice, that is, they produced tree structures that reflect hierarchical order alone, e.g. The traditional focus on hierarchical order generated
3621-448: The idiom contains the semantic role of a verb, but not of any object. This is true of kick the bucket , which means die . By contrast, the semantically composite idiom spill the beans , meaning reveal a secret , contains both a semantic verb and object, reveal and secret . Semantically composite idioms have a syntactic similarity between their surface and semantic forms. The types of movement allowed for certain idioms also relate to
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#17328549218913692-439: The idiomatic structure, this continuity is only required for idioms as lexical entries. Certain idioms, allowing unrestricted syntactic modification, can be said to be metaphors. Expressions such as jump on the bandwagon , pull strings , and draw the line all represent their meaning independently in their verbs and objects, making them compositional. In the idiom jump on the bandwagon , jump on involves joining something and
3763-679: The impression that DGs have little to say about linear order, and it has contributed to the view that DGs are particularly well-suited to examine languages with free word order. A negative result of this focus on hierarchical order, however, is that there is a dearth of DG explorations of particular word order phenomena, such as of standard discontinuities . Comprehensive dependency grammar accounts of topicalization , wh -fronting , scrambling , and extraposition are mostly absent from many established DG frameworks. This situation can be contrasted with phrase structure grammars, which have devoted tremendous effort to exploring these phenomena. The nature of
3834-553: The leathers") in Italian. Some idioms are transparent. Much of their meaning gets through if they are taken (or translated) literally. For example, lay one's cards on the table meaning to reveal previously unknown intentions or to reveal a secret. Transparency is a matter of degree; spill the beans (to let secret information become known) and leave no stone unturned (to do everything possible in order to achieve or find something) are not entirely literally interpretable but involve only
3905-438: The lexicon, and as such, they are concrete units of syntax. The dependency grammar trees of a few sentences containing non-constituent idioms illustrate the point: The fixed words of the idiom (in orange) in each case are linked together by dependencies; they form a catena. The material that is outside of the idiom (in normal black script) is not part of the idiom. The following two trees illustrate proverbs: The fixed words of
3976-492: The likelihood that semantic, morphological, and/or prosodic dependencies will be mistaken for syntactic dependencies is great. The following four subsections briefly sketch each of these dependency types. During the discussion, the existence of syntactic dependencies is taken for granted and used as an orientation point for establishing the nature of the other three dependency types. Semantic dependencies are understood in terms of predicates and their arguments . The arguments of
4047-404: The node labels. The distinction between dependency and phrase structure grammars derives in large part from the initial division of the clause. The phrase structure relation derives from an initial binary division, whereby the clause is split into a subject noun phrase (NP) and a predicate verb phrase (VP). This division is certainly present in the basic analysis of the clause that we find in
4118-453: The plural of the demonstrative determiner, hence these appears, not this , which means there is a morphological dependency that points down the hierarchy from houses to these . The situation is reversed in (b), where the singular subject Sam demands the appearance of the agreement suffix -s on the finite verb works , which means there is a morphological dependency pointing up the hierarchy from Sam to works . The type of determiner in
4189-413: The possessive marker -s . The prosodic dependencies in the following examples are indicated with the hyphen and the lack of a vertical projection line: [REDACTED] The hyphens and lack of projection lines indicate prosodic dependencies. A hyphen that appears on the left of the clitic indicates that the clitic is prosodically dependent on the word immediately to its left ( He'll , There's ), whereas
4260-409: The predicate to help in (d) takes the one argument Jim but is not directly connected to Jim in the syntactic hierarchy, which means that semantic dependency is entirely independent of the syntactic dependencies. Morphological dependencies obtain between words or parts of words. When a given word or part of a word influences the form of another word, then the latter is morphologically dependent on
4331-538: The proverbs (in orange) again form a catena each time. The adjective nitty-gritty and the adverb always are not part of the respective proverb and their appearance does not interrupt the fixed words of the proverb. A caveat concerning the catena-based analysis of idioms concerns their status in the lexicon. Idioms are lexical items, which means they are stored as catenae in the lexicon. In the actual syntax, however, some idioms can be broken up by various functional constructions. The catena-based analysis of idioms provides
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#17328549218914402-539: The same figurative meaning in 57 European languages. She also says that the phrase "to shed crocodile tears", meaning to express insincere sorrow, is similarly widespread in European languages but is also used in Arabic, Swahili, Persian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Mongolian, and several others. The origin of cross-language idioms is uncertain. One theory is that cross-language idioms are a language contact phenomenon, resulting from
4473-728: The specific conventions employed in each tree vary. Solid lines are dependency edges and lightly dotted lines are projection lines . The only difference between tree (a) and tree (b) is that tree (a) employs the category class to label the nodes whereas tree (b) employs the words themselves as the node labels. Tree (c) is a reduced tree insofar as the string of words below and projection lines are deemed unnecessary and are hence omitted. Tree (d) abstracts away from linear order and reflects just hierarchical order. The arrow arcs in (e) are an alternative convention used to show dependencies and are favored by Word Grammar . The brackets in (f) are seldom used, but are nevertheless quite capable of reflecting
4544-470: The subject as the NP appearing outside of finite VP. Since DGs reject the existence of a finite VP constituent, they were never presented with the option to view the syntactic functions in this manner. The issue is a question of what comes first: traditionally, DGs take the syntactic functions to be primitive and they then derive the constellation from these functions, whereas phrase structure grammars traditionally take
4615-406: The syntactic functions. The actual inventory of functions and designations employed vary from DG to DG. As a primitive of the theory, the status of these functions is very different from that in some phrase structure grammars. Traditionally, phrase structure grammars derive the syntactic functions from the constellation. For instance, the object is identified as the NP appearing inside finite VP, and
4686-439: The term dependency in the grammatical sense that we use it today. In early modern times, the dependency concept seems to have coexisted side by side with that of phrase structure, the latter having entered Latin, French, English and other grammars from the widespread study of term logic of antiquity. Dependency is also concretely present in the works of Sámuel Brassai (1800–1897), a Hungarian linguist, Franz Kern (1830–1894),
4757-449: The verb decorar , meaning memorize . In 2015, TED collected 40 examples of bizarre idioms that cannot be translated literally. They include the Swedish saying "to slide in on a shrimp sandwich", which refers those who did not have to work to get where they are. Conversely, idioms may be shared between multiple languages. For example, the Arabic phrase في نفس المركب ( fi nafs al-markeb )
4828-462: The verb in terms of the directed links, which are called dependencies . Dependency grammar differs from phrase structure grammar in that while it can identify phrases it tends to overlook phrasal nodes. A dependency structure is determined by the relation between a word (a head ) and its dependents. Dependency structures are flatter than phrase structures in part because they lack a finite verb phrase constituent , and they are thus well suited for
4899-406: The whole. For example, if the phrase "Fred kicked the bucket " is understood compositionally, it means that Fred has literally kicked an actual, physical bucket. The idiomatic reading, however, is non-compositional: it means that Fred has died. Arriving at the idiomatic reading from the literal reading is unlikely for most speakers. What this means is that the idiomatic reading is, rather, stored as
4970-477: The work of others in the 1960s, although it is not clear in what way these works were inspired by other sources. A number of other dependency-based grammars have gained prominence since those early works. DG has generated a lot of interest in Germany in both theoretical syntax and language pedagogy. In recent years, the great development surrounding dependency-based theories has come from computational linguistics and
5041-440: The works of, for instance, Leonard Bloomfield and Noam Chomsky . Tesnière, however, argued vehemently against this binary division, preferring instead to position the verb as the root of all clause structure. Tesnière's stance was that the subject-predicate division stems from term logic and has no place in linguistics. The importance of this distinction is that if one acknowledges the initial subject-predicate division in syntax
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