The use of common names in idiomatic expressions

The use of common names in idiomatic expressions

FACULTY OF HUMANITIES

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH PHILOLOGY

the use of common names in idiomatic expressions

Course Paper

The Student: xxxxxxxx

2009

Contents

Introduction

1. What is an idiom?

1.1 The meaning of idioms

1.2 The structure of idioms

1.3 The categories of idioms

2. Common names

2.1 Characteristic of Proper nouns

2.2 Place names

2.3 Personal names

3. Practical Chapter. The use of proper names in idioms

3.1 The methodology of the research

3.2 Idioms with personal names

3.3 Idioms with place names

4. Groups of personal names

4.1 Idioms with place names

Conclusions

References

Introduction

The theme of the paper is “The use of common names in idiomatic expressions”.

The subject of the present paper is based on the collecting common names from idiomatic expressions. The term “common names” refers to proper names. Proper names are names of persons, places or certain special things. In the English language proper names are typically capitalized nouns. They have a number of certain features as well – they are not used in the plural and are not preceded by adjectives, articles, numerals, demonstratives, or other modifiers. There are some kinds of proper nouns:

·        Place names.

·        Personal names.

·        Diacritics.

The aim of the work is to analyze the common names of English idioms, their types, features and structure. This paper will show the origins of the proper nouns used in idiomatic expressions.

The following objectives of the research have been set:

1.      To provide theoretical evidence and discuss on idiomatic English.

2.      To study English idiomatic dictionaries.

3.      To compare, analyze and classify idioms with personal and place names.

Research methods:

1.      Descriptive-theoretical literary analysis provided a possibility to review numerous issues concerning features of proper nouns.

2.      Contrastive linguistic analysis is also used in the work with the aim determining the frequency or intensity of common names usage in relation with idiomatic expressions.

Relevance of the work:

As noted by an increasing number of idiomatic scholars, it is clearly problematic to assume that idioms form a homogeneous class of linguistic items. Careful attention must be paid to the many syntactic, lexical, semantic and pragmatic differences that exist among words and phrases that are generally judged as idiomatic. The investigation of a wide range of idioms clearly demonstrates that many idioms are analyzable and have figurative meanings that are at least partly motivated. Many idioms have individual components that independently contribute to what these phrases figuratively mean as wholes.

The views and approaches such scholars as A. Makkai, M. Everaert, R. Moreno helped to analyze idiomatic English topic in more detailed way.

The structure of the work:

The paper consists of introduction, three chapters, conclusions, references and practical patterns.

A survey of theoretical issues necessary for the analysis is presented below.

1. What is an Idiom?

The ultimate roof of the term idiom is the Greek lexeme idioms, meaning “own, private, peculiar” (J. Strassel: 1982:13).

In different dictionaries there could be found quite a lot different explaining what an idiom is. There are some of the definitions:

1.      An idiom is an expression whose meaning is not predictable from the usual meanings of its constituent elements or from the general grammatical rules of a language and that is not a constituent of a larger expression of like characteristics (Random House Dictionary: 2009. #"javascript:OpenGlossary('idiom.html');">idiom is a phrase where the words together have a meaning that is different from the dictionary definitions of the individual words, which can make idioms hard for ESL students and learners to understand (Dictionary of English idioms and idiomatic expressions: www.usingenglish.com.reference/idioms).

According to Ifill T. (2002:78) idioms are as “those that speaker cannot work out simply by knowing the grammar and the vocabulary of a language”. According to J. Saeed (2003:60) idioms are “words collocated together happen to become fossilized, becoming fixed over time”. This is the reason why idioms are set out as non-compositional.

Idioms are used in a wide variety of contexts and situations. They are often used in spoken language, in situations that range from friendly conversations to business meetings. Idioms are used in written English as well, especially in journalism where writers frequently use them to bring their stories to life.

Knowing the meaning of idioms let understand the smallest refinements of the language. However, it is quite difficult to understand the exact meaning of the idiom of the foreign language because it is related with some kind of problems that are named in the further chapter.

1.1 The meaning of idioms

An idiom is a sequence of words which has a different meaning as a group from the meaning it would have if you understood each word separately. Idioms add color to the language, helping us to emphasize meaning and to make our observations, judgments and explanations lively and interesting. They are also very useful tools for communicating a great deal of meaning in just a few words.

Knowing whether an expression receives a literal meaning or an idiomatic meaning is important for natural language processing applications that require some sort of semantic interpretation.

Idioms are pervasive in all styles of language use. The problem they present to the theoretical and computational linguist is not the fact that their meaning cannot be worked out by the usual mechanisms, for if it were not for other factors this could be overcome by treating them as ‘big’ lexical items to be looked up in a list in a fairly straightforward way.

Idiom is defined as expression that does not mean what it literally said. You cannot understand the meaning of whole idiom putting the meanings of each word from which consists idiom together. Put as simply as possible, an idiom is a fixed expression whose meaning cannot be taken as a combination of the meanings of its component parts. Thus, the common phrase kick the bucket has nothing to do with either kicking or buckets, but means simply, “to die.” Idiom has the meaning only as a unit and has lexical and grammatical stability as well. If you look at the individual words, it may not even make sense grammatically. According to M. Everaert (1995), an idiom is an institutionalized expression which overall meaning does not correspond to the combined meanings of its component parts. Many idioms are intuitively nontransparent: their meaning is hard to guess without a special context or previous exposure. In spite of that, very few idioms are fixed in forms. These features we will discussed in our following chapter.

1.2 The structure of Idioms

As it was said in our previous chapter, idioms are not mixed in form. One part of the phrase can be let out, for example, somebody has been around the block (a few minutes) can be said without the words a few times, although the meaning remains the same. This technique is also used for idioms which have become clichйs and are therefore often shortened, such as you can lead a horse to water (but you can’t make him drink). Some idioms can have any word inserted, depending on what the speaker is describing. For example, in the idiom the ____ of somebody’s dreams the underline space indicates that the range of nouns, adjectives, etc which could be inserted is unlimited.

In addition to that, the main idiom can have several less popular versions. For example, sell like hot cakes (go like hot cakes). It shows that idioms are not frozen units. In internal structure of idioms there also could be found some changes. Let us begin with the most minimal way in which an idiom can be altered from its base form: morphology:

1.

a. I will take them to task for their indolence.

b. I am taking them to task for their indolence.

c. I took them to task for their indolence.

d. I have taken them to task for their indolence.

2.

a. George and Simon have their ups and downs.

b. George and Simon are having their ups and downs.

c. George and Simon had their ups and downs.

In these example sets, we will analyze the idioms take NP to task and have one’s ups and downs to be the listed forms of the idioms in (1) and (2). These examples clearly show that the verb tense can be changed in the internal structure of the idiom. We can make a conclusion that those idioms which were classified as “completely frozen” exhibit this kind of behavior (trip the light fantastic vs. tripping the light fantastic vs. tripped the light fantastic) (M. Everaert: 1995:45).

It has been widely noted that the individual words in an idiom cannot be replaced by synonyms and still retain the idiomatic reading of the phrase. This is what qualifies them as fixed forms. In most non-idiomatic discourse, a speaker can use synonymy to create a new sentence with the same semantic meaning. That means that changing a word from the idiom with its synonym we will not get the synonymic idiom. In spite of that, idioms can be synonymous among themselves. For example:

John kicked the bucket.

John kicked the pail.

One thing that is readily noticeable about idioms is that many seem to resist undergoing transformations that similar non-idiomatic constructions can readily undergo while retaining the same sense. For example:

John kicked the bucket.

The bucket was kicked by John.

In spite of that sentence is transformed its meaning remains the same.

All these changes can be found in all categories of idioms.

1.3 The categories of Idioms

Idioms have been classified into several groups. Many idioms are derived from the names of body parts and bodily functions:

·        cover one's back – do something to protect yourself from criticism or future blame;

·        blood, sweat, and tears – great personal effort;

·        in cold blood- without feeling;

·        feel (something) in one's bones – sense something, have an intuition about something.

Other big group is idioms derived from animals names:

·        as weak as a kitten – weak, sickly;

·        hit the bulls-eye – to reach the main point of something;

·        dog-eat-dog – ready or willing to fight and hurt others to get what one wants;

·        monkey see, monkey do – someone copies something that someone else does.

The third big group is idioms derived from food and preparing it:

·        full of beans- to feel energetic, to be in high spirits;

·        grist for the mill- something that can be used to bring advantage or profit;

·        take the cake- to be the best or worst of something;

·        cook (someone's) goose- to damage or ruin someone.

Those are three the most common groups of idioms in English language. All these idioms are based on daily life events. They have risen from daily routine, from following the animal’s behavior as well as the human’s body reaction to different situations. They are often used in every day’s speech and they are quite intelligible.

Other idioms are quite rare in English language. For example, politics idioms:

·        body politics – A group of people organized under a single government or authority (national or regional);

·        fifth columnist – a member of a subversive organization who tries to help an enemy invade;

·        on the stump – politicians are campaigning for support and votes.

One rarer group is idioms based on crimes and police as well:

·        behind bars – to be in prison;

·        new sheriff in town – a new authority figure takes charge;

·        after the fact- after something (a crime etc.) has occurred.

These expressions are quite difficult to understand. For example, idiom new sheriff in town could be understood as a fact that a town has really got a new sheriff.

The category with common names in idioms is not the smallest one but it is not the most common one. We could say with some exceptions.

For example, idioms are widely known and understandable as well as common used in English language. This category we will analyze in our work.

·        Achilles heel – a person's weak spot;

·        Adam’s apple – a bulge in the throat, mostly seen in men.

2. Common names

Common name – a noun that is not normally preceded by an article or other limiting modifier, as any or some, and that is arbitrary used to denote a particular person, place, thing without regard to any descriptive meaning the word or phrase may have, as Lincoln, Beth Pittsburgh. (#"#">#"#">www.wikipedia.org)

·          Adages: Murphy’s law – ascribed to Edward A. Murphy who stated “If there's more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will end in disaster, then someone will do it that way.” (www.wikipedia.org)

·          Adjectives: parkinsonian – James Parkinson (as in parkinsonian syndrome), Stalinist -Joseph Stalin. (www.wikipedia.org)

·          Cartoon characters: Baby Face Finlayson, from The Beano comic – Baby Face Nelson, Nero, Belgian comic character by Marc Sleen is named after the Roman emperor Nero. (www.wikipedia.org)

·          Chemical elements: curium (Cm, 96) – Pierre and Marrie Curie, promethium (Pm, 61) – Prometheus, a Titan from Greek mythology. (www.wikipedia.org)

·          Human anatomical parts: Achilles tendom – Achilles, Greek mythological character, Adam’s apple – Adam, Biblical character. (www.wikipedia.org)

·          Ideologies: Leninism – after Vladimir Lenin, Maoism – after Mao Zedong. (www.wikipedia.org)

·          Inventions: Braille – Louis Braille, diesel engine – Rudolph Diesel. (www.wikipedia.org)

·          Mathematical theorems: Ptolemaios theorem (geometry), Atkinson’s theorem (operator theory). (www.wikipedia.org)

·          Prizes, awards and medals: Nobel Prize – Albert Nobel, O. Henry Awards – O. Henry. (www.wikipedia.org)

3. Practical Chapter. The use of proper names in idioms

3.1 The methodology of the Research

The aim of the research work is to analyze the use of proper names in English idioms and to identify origins of these names. Idioms were classified into two groups: with personal names and with place names. The definitions of the collocated idioms were presented as well and they were illustrated with examples. The scope of the work is 97 idioms which were selected from the following sources:

·        Longman Idioms Dictionary (1999).

·        www.dictionary.com.

·        www.usingenglish.com.

The distribution of all taken examples is shown in figure No. 1.

Figure No.1 Kinds of idioms

Research methods employed in the work are as follow:

·        Descriptive-theoretical literary analysis provided a possibility to review numerous issues concerning features of proper nouns.

·        Statistical method – was salutary for the processing of the results of the empirical part of the research.

The English language has quite a long list of idioms. Idioms with personal and place names among all the idioms are not the prevailing ones. To compare both idioms with personal and place names researched in our work we can draw a conclusion than idioms with personal names are used more frequently in the English language. In our sources we have found only 24 ones with place names and even 73 idioms with personal names, in percent style, accordingly 25 % and 75 %. For example:

·        Be robbing Peter to pay Paul – to take money from one part of a system or organization that needs it and use it for another part of the system or organization, so that you deal with one difficulty but still have problems. (Longman Idiom Dictionary:1999:261). Idiom with personal names.

·        New York minute – (USA) if something happens in a New York minute, it happens very fast. (www.usingenglish.com). Idiom with place name.

3.2 Idioms with personal names

We have analyzed 73 idioms with personal names and while analyzing the idiom we have noticed that they could be divided into groups according to their origins. We distinguished the following groups:

1.      Names derived from mythology.

2.      Names derived from religion.

3.      Names based on characters of the books, films, cartoons etc.

4.      Names derived from folk mythology.

5.      Names of the real persons.

6.      Others.

Results of this analysis are shown in figure № 2.

Figure № 2.Origin of personal names in idioms

According to the results we made conclusions that religion and mass media influence people’s language the most. Idioms with these names are quite popular and very often used in spoken language. For example, idioms based on religion characters:

1.      Raise Cain – to complain a lot about something in an angry or noisy way because you are determined to get what you want (www.usingenglish.com).

2.      Put the fear of God into somebody – to make someone feel frightened of doing something wrong by making them realize the bad things that could happen if they do it (Longman Idioms Dictionary: 1999:139).

3.      Adam's apple – the Adam's apple is a bulge in the throat, mostly seen in men (www.usingenglish.com).

Let us see the origin of the name Cain –this person was the first murderer according to scriptural accounts in the Bible – Genesis 4 and in the Qur'an – 5:27-32. The biblical account, from the King James' Version, tells us how Cain and Abel, the two sons of Adam and Eve, bring offerings to God, but only Abel's is accepted. Cain kills Abel in anger and is cursed by God (Ошибка! Недопустимый объект гиперссылки.).

The next big group is idioms with personal names which are taken from famous books, songs, cartoons. For example:

1.      Rip van Winkle – Rip van Winkle is a character in a story that slept for twenty years, so if someone is a Rip van Winkle, they are behind the times and out of touch with what is happening now (www.usingenglish.com).

2.      Mickey Mouse – something that is intellectually trivial or not of a very high standard (www.usingenglish.com).

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