Linguistics English Idioms an Idiom

Linguistics

English Idioms

An idiom is a phrase that when the words are taken together they have a different meaning from the dictionary definitions of the individual words. This is what makes idioms hard for ESL students and other learners to master (English Idioms & Idiomatic Expressions, 2009). English idioms are often fun and useful, but they are sometimes very hard to learn. People across all languages use idioms frequently, so it is important to be familiar with them so that meaning is not lost, when one is trying to learn a foreign language (101 English Language Idioms, n.d.).

An idiom is basically a group of words which has a different meaning from the meaning of the individual words that it is made up of. The meaning of the idiomatic expression is not the total of the words taken one by one. An idiom often needs to be learned and used as a single unit of language in order to preserve its meaning. It should never be considered as individual elements. Idioms are often referred to as fixed expressions because of the fact that they need to be looked at as a group, because in many cases users can not make linguistic changes such as adding or dropping words, replacing a word with another, or changing the order of words without changing the meaning completely (Mahmoud, 2002).

Learners find that most idioms don't make a lot of sense. This is because their origins are very old and often hard to follow. Some idioms originate from ancient literature and some come from classic films. Learning the background of an idiom can help a person to remember them and use them correctly. Not all idioms are considered to be part of a typical English vocabulary. "Some English-speaking regions use specific idioms that other native English speakers have never heard of before" (English Idiom, 2009).

An idiom can have a very literal meaning in one situation and a completely different idiomatic meaning in another situation. These phrases often don't follow the normal rules of meaning and grammar. If one says that they are sitting on the fence, it can literally mean that they are sitting on a fence, but the idiomatic meaning of to sit on the fence means that one is not making a clear choice regarding some issue (What is an idiom, n.d.).

Many idioms are very similar to terms that are used in other languages and can be easily understood. Other idioms are thought to have come from older phrases which have developed over time. One example of this is seen in the phrase to hold one's horses' means to stop and wait patiently. It comes from a time when people rode horses and would have to hold their horses while waiting for someone or something (What is an idiom, n.d.).

There is a tremendous history of idioms coming from such things as sports. This is seen frequently in both the United Kingdom and the United States. Because of this these idioms may require some special cultural knowledge so that they can be understood. For example, the phrase to cover all of one's bases means to thoroughly prepare for or deal with a situation. This came from the American game of baseball where one must cover or protect all the bases (What is an idiom, n.d.).

Grammar Issues

Often idioms are unique and fixed in the way that they are structured grammatically. The idiom to sit on the fence cannot be changed to read to sit on a fence or to sit on the fences because at that point it would make no sense. There are however some changes that can be made to an idiom and not change its meaning. Some of these changes result in a change that under normal circumstances would be considered as wrong. "The phrase to be broken literally means that something is broken. To be broke is grammatically incorrect but it has an idiomatic meaning of to have no money" (What is an idiom, n.d.).

A phrasal verb is a verb which is made up of a combination of a verb and an adverb, a verb and a preposition, or a verb with an adverb and a preposition. It can have either a literal meaning that is easy for most to understand because the meaning is clear from the words that are used. But it can also have an idiomatic meaning which cannot easily be understood by looking at the words that it contains, making it very difficult to master (What is an idiom, n.d.).

Learning Strategies

Interlingual transfer or the transfer of a word from a native language into a foreign language is a cognitive strategy that learners use when their normal linguistic strategies fall short. Those who use idioms in there native languages have an additional source for hypothesis formation that someone learning a foreign language does not. The influence of the native language and the commonness of interlingual transfer are an unquestionable advantage to the native language learner. This can especially be seen in learning situations where a students' exposure to the foreign language is minimal. Interlingual transfer is a strategy that is readily available to a learner in order to help them compensate for the inadequacies that occur when they are trying to communicate in a foreign language (Mahmoud, 2002).

Variations that result from interlingual transfer have been seen at all linguistic levels. There are very few studies that have been seen that discuss idioms when talking about the difficulties that students face when learning English as a foreign language (EFL). This shortage of studies on the transfer of idioms is often thought to be due to the fact that students cannot understand and use idioms until they reach a fairly advanced level of proficiency in the language that they are trying to learn. The ability of EFL students to comprehend and produce idioms does not begin to get anywhere near the level of a native speaker. EFL learners usually manage to get by expressing themselves in plain non-idiomatic language (Mahmoud, 2002).

English as Second Language Learners

Some idiomatic expressions are very common while others are very specific to a particular language. Whether common or language-specific, if they are used in a spontaneous and daily way by a person they are seen as having a native or near-native command of the language. It is thought that if a person who is a foreign learner of English tries to not use idioms they will be immediately be seen as a foreigner. It is often thought that if a person does not use idiomatic expressions in there everyday language it is not because they have a lack of knowledge but rather because they simply don't want to. The use of idioms is often not expected of foreign language learners because they have such a low level of proficiency in the language. It is often seen that even after many years of formal classroom instruction; many learners only attain an intermediate level of proficiency in English. Much like native speakers of English, foreign speakers often use idioms when communicating in their native language, which makes it hard to adapt to those in a foreign language (Mahmoud, 2002).

Idioms are often important factors in native-like conversation by English as foreign language speakers. Many linguists find that idioms require special attention in language programs and feel that they should not be downgraded to a position of secondary importance in a curriculum. Unfortunately, it can be seen by the textbooks that are being used that classroom learning of EFL is not very concerned with the teaching of idioms and fixed expressions. This then forces teachers to make up their own exercises or lessons in order to put the teaching of fixed expressions into their curriculum. The cognitive approach to language learning often provides very useful aspects and implications on how to organize idiom learning into a classroom setting (Sportwissenschaftler, Steines, and Goertz, 2006).

Studies and Theories

Irujo (1986) conducted a study which was focused on the question of how transfer influences the achievement of idioms in English for foreign language learners. Her study was based on the assumption that Second Language Learners have problems using idioms and that these difficulties are attributed to be the result of transfer problems. Irujo's approach followed a rather traditional view of idioms. She defined them as conventionalized expressions because their meanings cannot be determined from the meaning of their parts. What she meant by conventionalized was that a native speaker immediately understood what was being said and did not have to analyze or interpret the meaning (Sportwissenschaftler, Steines, and Goertz, 2006).

Idiomatic expressions have always caused problems for linguists because they seem to represent exceptions to all the principles on which language has long been thought to function. These simple expressions are often used without difficulty by native speakers during casual conversation. These same expressions though prove to be extremely difficult to explain in models of language that assume a clear distinction between the lexicon, which contains words and morphemes and rules, and the morphological and syntactic processes which operate on these things. The reaction on the part of the community of language researchers has ranged between the grudging acceptance that some multiple word collocation do exist in the lexicon, and the lexicon re-conceptualized as incorporating elements from all levels of linguistic structure. "According to this second view idiomatic expressions represent one end of a continuum which places highly analyzable and semantically decomposable utterances at one end, and highly specified, semantically opaque idioms at the other" (Sanford, 2008).

Current literature says that idioms make up a very large and heterogeneous class of semi-fixed multiword expressions. Traditionally, in order to classify an expression as idiomatic it had to be non-compositional in nature. "If an expression is thought to be non-compositional, it is believed that its meaning cannot be inferred by simply adding up the semantics of its constituents. As a result, the meaning of idioms appears to be quite arbitrary" (Boers, 2007). It is because of this arbitrary nature of the semantics of idioms that has long been taken for granted in second or foreign language teaching. It is thought that because of the absence of reliable clues inside the idioms themselves, learners can only resort to contextual clues in order to try and interpret idioms and the only way learners can do this is to memorize each expression by rote-learning (Boers, 2007).

During recent years cognitive semantic studies regarding figurative language have shown that a considerable number of idioms are not completely arbitrary. It is thought now that figurative idioms are motivated. While it is true that their figurative, idiomatic meaning is not fully predictable on the basis of a literal reading, but that the derivation from that literal sense can nevertheless be explained. It is thought that figurative idioms can be motivated along various lines (Boers, 2007).

When people talk about idioms the term idiomatic is often used. It is usually used in one of the following three ways:

As a property of discourse; a piece of discourse is described as idiomatic if it sounds natural or native like. This means that a foreign learner's speech or text will be idiomatic if it resembles that produced by the native speaker

Lexical combinations which occur as grammatical units in the language like phrases

A general term equivalent to multi-word units or phrasal expressions

Many times the terms idiom and idiomatic expressions are used interchangeably, especially in language books. This is particularly true of internet sites which deal with idioms and idiomatic expressions. It is important to remember that these two terms have different senses during translation (Abu-Ssaydeh, 2004).

Translating an idiom by using an identical idiom in the end language has been found to be a good way to teach. If English idioms are examined carefully, a close link between the idioms and the culture in which they are found will become immediately clear. If it is often thought that hunting, the army, sports, gambling, card games and many other areas of life have contributed to the creation of many British idioms. American idioms are also a good representation of the culture of the nation as a whole. The famous Gold Rush in 1848 and 1849, gave us the idiom strike it lucky. The main influence for Americans has been sports, in particular baseball, that have contributed to the enrichment of idioms (Abu-Ssaydeh, 2004).

Even thought there is this close link between the idioms and their respective cultures, similarities do sometimes exist across languages. Once is a while, one might encounter an idiom that is a copy of an English idiom. "Spanish and English have the same idiom in skate on thin ice. Arabic, Hebrew and English all have I am all ears. German and English have he's getting on my nerves and she's got a screw loose. This allows a seasoned translator to give priority in idiom translation to those that are identical" (Abu-Ssaydeh, 2004). The result of this strategy is to be able to preserve the impact of the English idiom. The translation retains not only the lexical constituency, the semantic content and the brevity of the idiom but also the outcome it may have on the receiver. Idioms are very useful tools for communicating a great deal of meaning in just a few words (Abu-Ssaydeh, 2004).

A decomposable idiom happens when an idiom whose individual components contribute to its figurative meaning. But yet the components of a non-decomposable idiom do not make such a contribution. Because of this difference the Model of Dual Idiom Representation was introduced in order to help explain the differences between the two groups. At the lexical level, this model assumes the parallel existence of idiom entries and constituent entries. The degree of decomposability and the frequency with which the idiom is encountered determines its lexical representation. "If it so happens that there is no idiom entry for a particular idiom, conceptual representations are figured out during comprehension. Because nonnative speakers encounter idioms less often than native speakers, the first language and second language lexicon vary with regard to the number of idiom entries" (Abel, 2003).

In linguistic theories that are mainly concerned with literal language, idioms have always caused serious problems. This is why linguists and psycholinguists have developed a number of hypotheses to describe the special grammatical characteristics of idioms and also to explain their processing and representation. Although many insights have been gained from these studies, there are three aspects that have been neglected to be looked at. The first is that the studies deal exclusively with the native mental lexicon and do not try to integrate the second language lexicon. Secondly, the studies concentrate either on lexical representations or on conceptual aspects but do not try to combine the two into one theoretical model. And lastly, most of the studies do not allow for frequency effects to play a role in the representation or processing of idioms (Abel, 2003).

Over the last several years, psycholinguistic idiom research has been dominated by several approaches to idiom comprehension and representation and by the Idiom Decomposition Hypothesis. One of the central questions has been whether during idiom comprehension the literal or the figurative meaning is retrieved. A related question has been in which order the different meanings are accessed, if both meanings are retrieved. There are three prominent studies that experimentally tested these questions and that can be referred to as the first generation of idiom processing hypotheses. These are the Idiom List Hypothesis, the Lexical Representation Hypothesis and the Direct Access Hypothesis. All three hypotheses fundamentally rely on the idea that the meaning of an idiom is stored in a separate mental idiom list (Abel, 2003).

A more recent model, the Model of Dual Idiom Representation is a psycholinguistic model which not only combines the lexical and the conceptual level but also integrates the representation of idioms in the first language and the second language lexicon. In addition, it considers frequency effects that influence the representations. Supporting evidence for this model comes from empirical studies on the decomposability of idioms with native and nonnative speakers of English (Abel, 2003).

The DIR Model as developed to provide these requirements. The central assumptions and advantages of the DIR Model can be stated as follows: the model considers not only a lexical, but also a conceptual level of representation. Secondly, at the lexical level the duality it refers to the parallel existence of both constituent and idiom entries. The development of an idiom entry depends on the idiom's decomposability -- non-decomposable idioms definitely need an idiom entry -- and its frequency. The more frequent an idiom, the more likely it will develop an idiom entry. One of the DIR Model's advantages is its compatibility with regard to the L1 and the L2 lexicon. The differences between the native and the nonnative lexicon, which are mainly due to differences in the frequency of exposure to idiomatic configurations, can be described and explained by gradual variation of the same theoretical assumptions. For decomposable idioms, idiom entries should be regarded as additional pieces of information about frequently-occurring linguistic entities and not as a mandatory prerequisite to idiom processing. The claim of dual representations qualifies the special status that has been attributed to idioms in, for example, generative models of grammar and which has been responsible for their treatment as exceptions. but, considering the abundance of idioms in language, it is not justifiable to treat them as something special. What is needed is a representational model such as the one introduced in this article that, on the basis of the same theoretical assumptions, is able to describe and explain expressions located at various points on the continuum of compositionality and decomposability (Abel, 2003).

Problems and Issues

Idioms are perhaps one of the most problematic features of language learning for anyone who takes on learning a new language. The good thing is that a beginner in a language is hardly likely to encounter them or to be expected to understand and use them. But as ones language skills become better and in order to be a natural speaker of a language, idioms will need to be learned and used. They make one more at home with the language and even help them to understand the culture where they are (Idioms, 2009).

When one takes a word and looks at its meaning, they often have no actual semantic meaning. Idioms usually come from older phrases which have its meaning rooted in its history but which has been lost over time. This is clearly a big problem for language learners with idioms because they do not actually mean anything. When a person who is learning a language comes across an idiom that they are unfamiliar with, it will usually have no meaning to them at all. It will certainly not mean what they will translate it to mean (Idioms, 2009).

It is thought that the only way to be truly proficient with idioms in a foreign language is to properly submerge oneself into the language. Idioms will never come naturally and if one tries to look up every word that they hear they will only increases the risk of mistranslating them and making errors. On the other hand if one were to live in the country where the language was being used and they listened to it being used by native speakers every day, the chances are they would start to hear idioms. And when one hears them used in the correct way by people who know exactly what they mean, they will start to establish them into their speaking (Idioms, 2009).

Idiomaticity has recently become a much respected area of study in psycholinguistics, linguistics, developmental psychology, and neuropsychology. This interest is thought to be well founded since both American and British English contain many thousands of formulaic phrases and expressions that people must learn. "Given the fact that language production relies heavily on an ability to string together prefabricated, memorized multi-word expressions, that is, whole phrases which are stored in memory, and retrieved from it, as unbroken-up chunks, people are not considered competent speakers of the target language until they master the various cliched, idiomatic expressions that are ubiquitous in everyday discourse" (Guo, 2009).