COMPARISON OF SOME THEORIES OF IDIOMS IN ENGLISH

KREMENA DIMITROVA

Bachelor of Arts Thesis

Instructor, Frank Richter:

Lexical Idiosyncrasies in Syntax and Logical Form (SS 05)

Tuebingen, 29. August 2005

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction 2 2. The Approach of Krenn and Erbach (1994) 4 3. The Approach of Sailer (2003) 9 4. The approach of Söhn (2005) 16 5. Comparison 22

5.1. Classification of IEs and Range of Data analysed 22 5.2. IEs Listed in the Lexicon 23 5.3. Analysis of Metaphorical, Internally regular and Decomposable IEs 23 5.4. Specify the Co-Occurrence Restrictions 23 5.5. Flexibility of IEs 24 5.6. Account of Keeping Generality 25 5.7. Successfulness 25

6. Summary 26

Abstract

Idiomatic Expressions or IEs, are a common problem in formal grammar. The question is, how can such a system built on terms of regular combination, deal with the different cases of irregularity of IEs? Often the meaning of the whole expression cannot be composed of the meanings of its daughters in a regular way, and moreover show a different level of flexibility. Many theories attempt to give account for the irregular behaviour of those elements. All contribute some interesting ideas, but in this paper we will concentrate only on three approaches. We will see in more detail the analyses of Krenn and Erbach(1994), Sailer(2003) and Söhn(2005) and try to see where the differences in their concepts are, why some of their ideas are criticized and not adopted for further use, or in what aspect they appear more successful than the others. We will first try to shortly introduce the three approaches, in order to give the reader an idea of the main concepts of the analyses and then we will summarize a comparatively the most important issues in them. 1 Introduction Two groups of IEs can be distinguished taking into account their semantics. Some have a meaning that cannot be derived from the meaning of its consisting parts and therefore cannot be analysed in a compositional way. For other IEs, the constituents can be assigned meanings with which they can regularly contribute for the meaning of the whole expression. These idioms can be analysed compositionally, but what distinguishes them from free combinations is that the parts require the presence of particular lexical items in order to save the idiomatic meaning. Moreover, they show a different flexibility degree, which should be accounted for in a theory of grammar. The way they exhibit their irregularity appear to be the instance due to which they are distinguished not only from regular phrases, but also among themselves. It is a challenge for the formal grammars to take a full account on these irregularities, since such systems usually aim for expressing generalizations and regularities in natural language. In the paper a few IEs are used in order to see how the analyses work. We do not attempt to give any detailed linguistic analysis for them, so we will just mention their most important properties which are relevant for the three theories. The examples are the following: Shoot the breeze-“chat” The meaning of this IE is “chat”. But even though the phrase is structurally well-built, we can not in any way distribute its meaning among the constituents. The flexibility level of this IE is quite low. The only observable lexical variation is inflection. 1) Yesterday we were shooting the breeze with some friends and we decided to make a cake for Nick’s birthday. 2) *The breeze was shot by us. 3) *We shot the breeze which was very interesting. 4) *We shot the interesting breeze. Take into account-“consider” The IE contains the completely “frozen” prepositional object into account. It doesn’t allow for any modification. A direct object is always required by the verb take. The meaning of the IE cannot be derived from its parts. But it certainly exhibits more flexibility than the IE shoot the breeze.

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5) We took all the possibilities into account. 6) We took all the possibilities that we discussed yesterday into account. 7) *George always takes his friends into great account. 8) All the possibilities were taken into account. Spick and span-“brand-new, bright” This expression is completely fixed. Any modification or change in the order of the constituents is impossible. Certainly, the meanings of the elements which originate from Old Norse1 “spike, nail” (spick) and “a wooden chip” (span) have nothing to do with the meaning of the IE. “Spick and span” is used is just like any adjective. 9) We made the cake in the spick and span kitchen. 10) *We made the cake in the spick and very span kitchen. 11) *We made the cake in the span and spick kitchen. 12) I saw my lady Batten walking through the dirty lane with new spick and span white shoes. Spill the beans-“reveal a secret” The meaning of this IE can be distributed among its parts. Spill will be assigned the meaning “reveal” or “divulge” and the beans a secret. The idiomatic phrase exhibits high level of flexibility. Only topicalization and relativization are not allowed. 13) George was very impatient to tell Nick about his birthday cake and spilled the beans. 14) The beans were spilled. 15) *The beans on the cake he spilled. 16) *The beans that we kept so long were spilled. Make a difference-“distinguish” As a support-verb construction (SVC), “make a difference” behaves like a free combination with the only exception of the co-occurrence requirement of its constituents. In its use as a light-verb construction the IE means “distinguish”, while in its main verb use it will have the reading of causing a change in effect, change the nature of something. 17) We have to make a major difference between good friends and bad friends. SVC 18) His score on this test will make the difference between passing and failing2. Main verb 19) Stacy said that a difference has to be made between a good cook and a bad cook, so she suggested that George surprises all with something much more delicious than the cake we made. 20) The difference that we made was important for Nick. Krenn and Erbach try to capture the idioms and support verb constructions within the frames of the traditional HPSG. (A classification of the IEs in terms of compositionality is applied, whereas their ‘frozenness’ is also an important factor). The authors discuss the problems concerned with it and try to find a solution which at the end doesn’t turn out to be very successful, either because principles of the HPSG are violated, or certainly the analysis is not the best way the irregularities are accounted for. The analysis of IEs which Sailer proposes is based on the distinction between internal irregularity and internal regularity. His theory is criticized for being too powerful as well as unrestrictive and thus allowing other kinds of phenomena to be explained as collocational. Söhn distinguishes between decomposable and non-decomposable IEs. He tries to capture with his classification suggestions most of the types of IEs and therefore introduces a lot more morphological, lexical, syntactic and semantic criteria of regularity. Some of these could also 1 An example found at http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-spi5.htm 2 An example found at http://www.answers.com/topic/make-a-difference

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be attributed to the fact that his theory was written for German which has more complicated syntax than English, but this problem is not the aim of this paper, so we will try to adjust our English examples to his theory. His analysis adopts modified ideas both from Sailer and Krenn and Erbach. Some technical details remain unfinished in his theory and another weak point in it is that the analysis turns out to be in cases too restrictive. Of course, our purpose in this paper is not to explain thoroughly all the details in the analyses, rather these which are important to briefly introduce the ideas of the approaches in order to have a base for comparison. Also, a discussion about the semantic frameworks adopted by the three theories, and the differences in the introduction of semantics in the IEs will be missed. What is important for us is that account of the semantics exists. But let’s first start with a more detailed overview of Krenn and Erbach(1994). 2. The approach of Krenn and Erbach (1994)

Krenn and Erbach distinguish between three types of collocational phenomena: idioms, support verb constructions, and “compositional collocations”. Since the latter are just word patterns with a very high probability of co-occurrence of the constituents and the meaning of which is derived regularly from the meaning of their parts, they could be handled by the usual assumptions of formal grammar. Therefore, they are not further discussed in their work. The idioms are divided into unanalysable and metaphorical. The unanalysable are those idioms the meaning of which is not derived compositionally from the meanings of their elements. In contrast, the metaphorical idioms have a meaning which could be a regular combination if their parts are assigned the relevant semantics. An important feature of some idioms is that they could be entirely fixed, or contain fixed elements. Such entities are often not grammatically well built, like in the case of by and large where the syntactic structure is still in question. Another issue is that usually the meaning of a completely fixed IE has nothing to do with the meanings of its parts. The intuition suggests that such entities should be treated as phrases because they are formed of several words. But the above mentioned properties would cause some problems in the case of adopting this possibility. For example, one is that the ungrammatical structure of these expressions cannot be accounted for by the usual principles of grammar. Another example is that the Semantics Principle of HPSG gives the phrase the meaning of its head and even if the idiom is assigned the proper meaning, a contradiction arises between the idiomatic and literal reading. Keeping in mind these difficulties and the fact that these expressions show no flexibility, the authors prefer to use multi-word-lexemes for the representation of completely fixed idioms, i.e. such entities will be introduced as single words with a bit more complex phonology. An instance of those is spick and span which has the function of an adjective and means “bright”. Here is how its multi-word lexical entry (Fig.1) would appear:

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PHON spick and span

HEAD adjCAT

SUBCAT NPSYNSEM LOC

brightCONTENT

BRIGHT-IS 1

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦

Fig.1 Multi-word-lexeme for the IE spick and span

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For those idioms that allow a certain level of flexibility, the same analysis doesn’t seem to be the proper solution. Krenn and Erbach (1994) try to give for those IEs a unified syntactic treatment in order to capture their selectional and occurrence restrictions. But the problem of how to represent their semantics is handled in a different way for each group of IEs. The syntactic treatment they suggest is in terms of subcategorization analysis in order to keep everything on lexical level, thus allowing for Derivational Rules to account for processes like passivization and inflection. In that way, all information about the idiom will be included in the lexical entry of its head, the information about its complements being specified on the SUBCAT list. At first they consider the possibility of selecting for phonology, which is particularly motivated by cases like trip the light fantastic or take into account. The light fantastic and into account are frozen complements and the syntactic category of the constituents of the first one is not clear-cut. Also, their parts cannot be attributed a meaning which is part of the meaning of the whole expression. It would be very convenient if the heads of these expressions, the verbs trip and take respectively, could simply subcategorize for complements with the specific phonology.

1 2

PHON take

HEAD verbCAT

SUBCAT NP , NP , PP PHON into account

SYNSEM LOC consider

CONT CONSIDERER 1

CONSIDERED 2

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦

Fig.2 LE of the idiomatic version of take (into account) when selecting for phonology As good as it sounds, however, this solution appears to be problematic in many aspects. First, such a representation violates the Principle of Selection in HPSG which states that only selection for syntactic and semantic information which is contained in the synsem objects should be allowed, and not for phonology or constituent structure. Trying to avoid this problem, Krenn and Erbach(1994) assume that heads subcategorize for signs and not for synsems. However, they accept that selecting for phonology is not the best solution for representing the fixed complements, as the phonological information may change in processes like passivization, modification and others as evidenced by German data. For example*, the frozen complement den Garaus in the idiom den Garaus machen (the Garaus make, to finish off) appears originally in accusative case in active voice, but receives nominative case in passive: 21) Die Frau machte dem Mann den Garaus. Active The woman made the man the Garaus. “The woman finished the man off.” 22) Der Garaus wurde dem Mann gemacht. Passive The Garaus was the man made. “The man was finished off.”

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There are also cases where the subcategorized element can appear both in singular and plural like einen/den Beschluß fassen, (die) Beschlüsse fassen, lange vorbereitete Beschlüsse fassen. This shows that the concept of specifying the phonology value is not very successful, as each variability in the PHON value would have to be additionally specified. Searching for another possibility of representing the information of the frozen complements without having to specify their PHON values, the authors of the paper come to the introducing of the feature LEXEME which was earlier proposed in the theory of Erbach (1992). LEXEME is a head feature, because its purpose is to ensure which particular lexeme is the head of the complement phrase on the SUBCAT list of the head daughter of the IE. The information about the head lexeme percolates according to the Head-Feature Principle. But in order to make it relevant in cases of relativization and pronominalization, Krenn and Erbach (1994) specify LEXEME as an index feature. This is motivated by the fact that being a feature of sort index, it is shared between the NP and the relative and personal pronoun respectively. And now let’s see how our example IE take into account (Fig.3) will look within the subcategorization analysis using the LEXEME feature of Krenn and Erbach (1994):

[ ]1 2

PHON take

HEAD verb

SYNSEMLOCAL HEAD prep PFORM intoCAT SC NP ,NP ,

DTRSCOMP-DTRS NP SYNLOCHEAD...LEXEME account

SYN LOC consider

CONT CONSIDERER 1

CONSIDERED 2

⎡ ⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎢ ⎥

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎣ ⎦

⎢⎢⎢ ⎡ ⎤

⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦

⎣

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥

⎤⎢ ⎥⎥⎢ ⎥⎥⎢ ⎥⎥⎢ ⎥⎥⎢ ⎥⎥⎢ ⎥⎥⎢ ⎥⎥⎢ ⎥⎥⎢ ⎥

⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎦⎣ ⎦

Fig.3 LE of take (into account), LEXEME version The idiomatic verb take subcategorizes for a phrase which is headed by a word with LEXEME value account. The relevant semantics is specified in the CONTENT value of the verb. Since we are operating on lexical level, there is no problem for the DRs to take care of the relevant syntactic and semantic operations for which the IE allows. Modification is excluded by specifying structural properties of the phrase for which it subcategorizes for. Since the head daughter is specified as a lexical sign, modification is impossible. But what happens when an IE doesn’t allow for flexibility which is not blocked by the structure of the LE? Having explained the part with the syntactical issues of the analysis, it is time to discuss the semantics. As previously mentioned, the semantics of an unanalysable idiom is indecomposable into the meanings of its constituents. So, how can such an IE be analysed semantically, if the usual compositional means appear not to work here? Since the compositional semantics of HPSG is encoded in the lexical head, the specific semantic behaviour of the IEs can be specified in the lexical entries of their heads. Let’s see an illustration with the LE of shoot (the breeze) (Fig4). The IE doesn’t allow for any flexibility. The only possible variation is inflection.

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[ ] [ ] [ ][ ]( )withnom 1 HEAD-DTR... INDEX LEXEME breezeacc, sg DTRS MARKER-DTR det def

PHON shoot

HEAD verb

CAT SUBCAT NP , NP , PP

SYNSEM LOC

chatCONT

CHATTER 1

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦

Fig.4 LE of shoot (the breeze) But when the traditional semantic functions are applied, the door for flexibility which is otherwise forbidden by the distributional restrictions of the IE is left open. For instance, in the former example the complement receives an index which could be used as an antecedent for a pronoun, which is a property only of the literal reading. Therefore, thematic roles are introduced which are assigned by each verb to its complements. In our example, the actual meaning of the IE shoot the breeze is “to chat”. Here the frozen complement the breeze makes an empty semantic contribution and the verb assigns it an empty Θ-role. With the empty thematic roles is explained the impossibility of pronominalization, relativization, topicalization, passivization, etc. of those NPs. And how are the semantics of the metaphorical idioms accounted for? As we know, if we attribute their constituents the proper meaning they can regularly combine into the meaning of the whole expression.Therefore, the relevant meanings are assigned to their parts and a regular combination is assumed for them. The same treatment is applied on IEs which allow for semantic modification or quantification of their “frozen” complements. This analysis will be applied on the IE from our examples spill the beans (Fig.5).

[ ] [ ]1 2 HEAD-DTR...INDEX LEXEME beanacc, pl DTRS MARKER-DTR det def

PHON spill

HEAD verb

CAT SUBCAT NP , NP

SYN LOC divulge-information

CONT DIVULGER 1

DIVULGED 2

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦

⎡⎢

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦⎣

⎤⎥⎥⎥⎥⎥

⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥

⎦

Fig.5 LE of spill (the beans) The verb spill (the beans) will assign its complements the relevant thematic-roles just like any other verb from a metaphorical IE. This means that processes like passivization, relativization, etc. allowed for free combinations will apply on this IE. But as we know spill the beans doesn’t allow for relativization and topicalization. How do we account for such inflexibilities of metaphorical IEs? This remains unclear from the paper of Krenn and Erbach (1994), since they mention the treatment of metaphorical idioms quite briefly. Syntactically, the analysis of the support verb constructions doesn’t differ from the one we saw untill now - the support verb subcategorizes for its specific predicative noun. What concerns their semantics is that they inherit mainly the semantics of the predicative noun. The support verb contributes only with Aktionsart and in some cases information about the causative relation. Our example make a difference (Fig.6) will be treated the following way:

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[ ]

11

PHON make

HEAD verb

PHON differenceCAT

CAT SC NPSUBCAT NP ,SYNSEM LOC SYN LOC CONT 2

CONT 2 ACTIONSART neutral

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥

⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦

Fig.6 LE of make (difference) Having discussed the analysis of Krenn and Erbach (1994), it is also inevitable to mention some problems of their theory. First, a major disadvantage of LEXEME is that it doesn’t work for all cases. For example, verbs don’t have an index value and adjectives share their INDEX with the noun they modify. This will result in a problem when we have an IE like pull a fast one (“to cheat”) which allows for modification - pull a pretty fast one. Here pretty is an adverb and modifies the adjective fast. The following problem appears. Since the adjective shares its INDEX value with the noun, their LEXEME value is the same. In HPSG the modifier selects the modified head due to the feature MOD. At the same time, the adverb pretty modifies the adjective, but is unable to identify the required lexeme, because the LEXEME value of the adjective is that of the noun. Other problems of their theory come from the area of cranberry words. Söhn writes for them as his analysis is mainly concentrated on this thematic. He points out the following reasons why the theory of Krenn and Erbach is problematic for capturing the distributional requirements of bound words. Such words do not have a literal counterpart. But usually they can appear in a single environment, namely in co-occurrence with some particular word. However, as they receive a lexical entry just like all words, there is nothing in the analysis which prevents them from being subcategorized also by other heads, not only by the co-occurrence partner where the lexeme is explicitly specified. According to the analysis, an additional LE for each idiomatic use of a head word should be specified. Söhn points out an example (p.68) where this turns out to be a problem. In the case of prepositions which subcategorize for cranberry words, an explicit LE should be introduced. 23) aus Herzenslust (“with joy”) → aus selects for [..LEXEME herzenslust] 24) aus Liebeskräften (“with energy”)→ aus selects for [..LEXEME liebeskräfte] But in case when coordination between these bound words is possible, we found ourselves into a dilemma which of the lexical entries of the preposition aus to use - the one which selects the lexeme herzenslust or the one which selects liebeskräfte: Auf dem Schulkonzert schmetterte das Mädchen ihr Lied aus [ Herzenslust und On the concert sang the girl her song with joy and Liebeskräften]. energy. An additional problem is that the analysis doesn’t have a clear mechanism for distinguishing between idiomatic and literal meaning. The theta roles would help only in

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cases when the complement of the verb has an empty semantic contribution, but often this is not the case. These problems show that the analysis suggested by Krenn and Erbach(1994) for handling the different cases of IEs in terms of subcategorization doesn’t prove to be very successful. The next approach we are going to examine is that of Sailer (2003). His analysis is conceptionally much different, since the distributional restrictions of IEs are globally accounted for by stating the possible context of appearance of the constituents as a value of the newly introduced COLL attribute. 3. The approach of Sailer (2003) In this work Sailer concentrates on idiomatic verb phrases, but actually any IE which can be classified into internally regular or internally irregular can be accounted for by the analysis, as the former mentioned distinction is a base point for the representation of IEs in his theory. The internally regular IEs have a normal syntactic structure and if their parts are assigned their idiomatic meaning, the meaning of the whole phrase can be derived compositionally. But what distinguish them from regular phrases are their idiosyncratic properties. The internally irregular IEs are those which do not have a proper syntactic structure and/or have a meaning which cannot be distributed among their parts. Four semantic and six syntactic criteria are suggested which are supposed to help us distinguish between regular and irregular phrases and further classify the latter according to the distributional properties they exhibit. The semantic criteria are the following:

1. Every element in the VP can be attributed some meaning with which it occurs also outside the particular combination under consideration.

2. The meaning of the entire VP is arrived at by combining the meanings of its parts in a regular way.

3. Parts of the VP can be semantically modified. 4. In a V-NP combination, it is in principle possible to have a pronoun referring to the NP. Here are the syntactic criteria:

1. Every element in the VP occurs in the same form in some other combination. 2. Syntactically, the VP is of a regularly built shape. 3. If it is a V-NP combination, the direct object can be modified syntactically. 4. If it is a V-NP combination, it can be passivized,(and further raised).

5. If it is a V-NP combination, the direct object can be topicalized. 6. If it is a V-NP combination, the direct object can have the shape of a relative pronoun According to these criteria our examples will be assigned the relevant kind of irregularity. Shoot the breeze, take into account and spick and span are internally irregular, because the meaning of their constituents do not contribute for the meanings of the IEs. And “spill the beans” and “make difference” are internally regular because their meaning is a regular combination when their constituents are assigned the proper meaning. But we will see this again later in this chapter when we try to explain the lexical entries which the analysis will assign them. And now let’s see in more detail the analysis which adopts ideas from Gazdar et al. (1985) but is more successful in giving account of the internally irregular IEs.

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Sailer also assumes in his theory that the internally irregular IEs be listed in the lexicon. But in contrast to Krenn and Erbach (1994) he proposes for them a representation on phrasal rather than lexical level. Since these IEs do not have the usual properties of regular phrases, the principles of semantic and syntactic combination do not apply to them. Therefore, all the principles of grammar should be modified in order to operate only on regular phrases. But what shall mark the distinction between the regular and irregular phrase when an IE has also a literal meaning which is usually the case? The answer to this and many other questions is the new attribute of sort sign-COLL. This feature is used in the case of internally irregular IEs to mark their irregular status, but its function is of much greater importance for the analysis of more flexible IEs where COLL accounts for their distributional restrictions. The value of the attribute is a list, and each time an internally irregular phrase is met, it is marked by setting the COLL value as a non-empty list. On the opposite, the feature value of the regular phrases is the elist. Having this mechanism to distinguish the IE from the regular phrase, the modification of the grammar principles can be easily made. An instance is the 25) HEAD-FEATEURE Principle:

phrase SYN LOC CAT HEAD 1DTRS headed-struc

DTRS H-DTR SYN LOC CAT HEAD 1COLL elist

⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥⇒⎢ ⎥ ⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦

In the original version of Pollard and Sag (1994) the principle informally says that there is an identity of HEAD values between a phrase and its head-daughter. Here, the principle is changed by the additional specification that the former mentioned identity is required only for regular phrases. Similar trivial changes are applied also for the rest of the grammar principles, the result being that they are in use only for regular combinations. The internally irregular IEs receive a representation in the lexicon in the form of Phrasal Lexical Entries (PLEs). Up to this point, the principle which contains a description of all lexical entries (words) is the WORD PRINCIPLE (Pollard and Sag, 1994). 26) The WORD PRINSIPLE:

( )1 n

wordLE or......or LE

STORE elist⎡ ⎤

⇒⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦

In the theory of Sailer the principle which describes all PLEs is the INTERNAL IRREGULARITY PRINCIPLE (IIP): 27) INTERNAL IRREGULARITY PRINCIPLE (IIP): [ ] ( )1 mCOLL nelist PLE or .........or PLE⇒ Sailer summarizes the WORD PRINCIPLE and the IIP into the LEXICON PRINCIPLE in order to account for all items in the lexicon. The common feature of all PLEs and words is their COLL value, because it is assumed that the internally irregular IEs and the words on which derivational rules are not applied have a nonempty COLL list. Regular phrases and words which are outputs of derivational rules have empty COLL lists. Having that in mind, it is natural to introduce a common principle which will describe both PLEs and LEs.

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Informally explained, the LEXICON PRINCIPLE describes all entries which have a nelist as a value of the COLL attribute. Here is the formal representation of the principle: 28) The LEXICON PRINCIPLE:

[ ]1 n 1

signLE or........or LE or PLE or........PLE

COLL nelist⎡ ⎤

⇒⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦

m

It is important to mention that the constituents of the PLEs and also the phrases that dominate it are regular. The only irregular item is the phrase of the IE. So, for example, if one of the constituents is a phrase, its COLL value will be elist, i.e. the traditional principles of combination apply to it, or if it is a word, it appears with its regular meaning. So, even though its building elements are regular, the IE ignores the principles of grammar and combines them irregularly. The IE only blocks the material from its daughters from appearing higher in the structure or of introducing new material. Now let’s turn to our examples and see how the analysis accounts for them. The IE shoot the breeze (Fig.8) doesn’t allow for any flexibility except inflection. Its meaning cannot be distributed among its parts. All this should be specified in its PLE. The relevant meaning is given as the CONTENT value of the phrase. Modification is excluded by specifying breeze as a direct daughter of the NP. Passivization is blocked by requiring the presence of an NP complement daughter in the structure of the PLE. The impossibility of topicalization and relativization are accounted for by the nature of the PLE, too. An NP non-head daughter with its specific phonology is required by the PLE of the IE. Assuming a traceless analysis of extraction, if this direct object is extracted, the needed phonology will be missing from its place. So, there will not be any VP which satisfies the requirements of the PLE. Here should be mentioned that the analysis of Sailer (2003) doesn’t provide a mechanism for blocking pronominalization which is impossible for an IE. The other IE from our examples is spick and span (Fig.7). It functions entirely like an adjective and is completely “frozen”. For such entities, a PLE is relevant, where only the phonology, its syntactic category and meaning is specified.

( )@ @

phrasePHON spick and span

adjCAT HEAD

MOD 3SS LOC CONT x.bright' x

COLL nelist

λ

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦

Fig.7 PLE of the IE spick and span

11

[ ]( )

( )

w ith4 5

@ @

p h ra s e

P H O N 1 2

H E A D 3 v e rbC A T

S S L O C S U B C A T N P , P P

C O N T x .c h a t ' (x )

h e a d -c o m p l-s t ru c

w o rd

D T R S H -D T R P H O N 1 s h o o t

H E A D 3S S L O C C A T

S U B C A T 4 , 5 , 6

P

N -D T R

λ

⊕

⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥

⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦

( ) ( )( )@ @ @

H O N 2

H E A D n o u nC A T

S U B C A T S S 6 L O C

C O N T P th e y :b re e z e ' P

P H O N b re e z eH -D T R

S S ND T R S

P H O N th eN -D T R

S S D e t

C O L L e lis t

y yλ

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎢ ⎥

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦⎢⎢⎣ ⎦

C O L L n e lis t

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥

⎥⎥⎥⎥⎥

⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦ Fig.8 PLE of the IE shoot the breeze The IE take into account contains the “frozen” complement into account. We cannot attribute it a meaning and since it exhibits no flexibility, it could be introduced in the PLE of take into account as a phrase with fixed phonology.

( )

4 5

@ @ @

4 5

phrase

PHON 1 2

HEAD 3 verbCAT

SC NP , NP

SYN LOC CONT x y.consider' x ,

word

H-DTR PHON 1 take

HEAD 3SS LOC CAT

SUBCAT NP , NP , 6DTRS

phrase

N-DTR PHON 2

yλ λ

⊕

⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥

⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦

into account

SS 6

COLL nelist

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥

⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦

Fig.9 PLE of the IE take into account In this part we will discuss how the analysis for internally regular IEs works. As we previously explained, those elements behave quite like regular phrases apart from the fact that

12

their constituents appear with their idiomatic meaning only within the frames of the IE or do not allow some semantic or syntactic operations typical for the free combinations. But still, they show much more flexibility than the internally irregular IEs and when assigned a meaning they contribute to regularly compose the meaning of the whole expression. Therefore, in Sailer’s analysis they are treated as regular combinations and the only thing they need to be fully accounted for is a mechanism to specify their distributional restrictions. The way this is done is by specifying the linguistic context of appearance of each constituent due to the COLL attribute. Until now, the new feature was used only to mark the difference between regular and internally irregular phrases. In the case of internally regular IEs, COLL is given another function, namely to specify the context of occurrence of a word. The context of occurrence is assumed to be the minimal clause of the word. Sailer defines minimal clause with the help of the dominance relation: 29) Minimal-clause (informal definition): For two signs x and y, such that x ≠ y, x is the minimal clause for y iff,

(i) x dominates y, and (ii) x has a SUBCAT value of sort empty-list and a HEAD value of sort verb, and (iii) there is no sign z which is dominated by x and satisfies (i) and (ii).

30) Definition of the relation dominate:

( )

( )( )

( )( )

( )( )

DTRS H-DTR 3

DTRS N-DTR 3

der-ruleSTORE IN 3

dominate 1 , 2 1 2

1dominate 1 , 2 E 3

and dominate 3 , 2

1dominate 1 , 2 E 3

and dominate 3 , 2

1dominate 1 , 2 E 3

and dominate 3 , 2

∀

∀ ⎡ ⎤⎣ ⎦

∀ ⎡ ⎤⎣ ⎦

⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤∀ ⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦

⇐ ≈

⎛ ⎞⎜ ⎟⇐⎜ ⎟⎝ ⎠⎛ ⎞⎜ ⎟⇐⎜ ⎟⎝ ⎠⎛ ⎞⎜ ⎟⇐ ⎜ ⎟⎜⎝ ⎠

⎟

In order to ensure that for each sign, and for each word which is dominated by this sign, the COLL value of this word either dominates the sign or is dominated by it, the COLL PRINCIPLE is assumed. 31) The COLL PRINCIPLE:

( ) ( )( )word

COLL 2 sign

dominate : , 1 dominate : , 2 A 1 A 2

and 1 or dominate 2 ,:sign

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦

⎛ ⎞⎛ ⎞ ⎛ ⎞⎜ ⎟⎜ ⎟ ⎜ ⎟⇒ ⇒⎜ ⎟⎜ ⎟ ⎜ ⎟⎜ ⎟⎝ ⎠⎝ ⎠⎝ ⎠

For each idiomatic constituent a new lexical entry with the relevant semantics and value of the COLL attribute is specified. The differences between the idiomatic word and its literal

13

counterpart are first in their meaning, since a new constant is specified for the idiomatic version, and second in the contexts of appearance. The following table (Fig.10) summarizes the possible values of COLL:

Entity sort COLL value Regular phrase phrase elist Internally irregular IE phrase [ ]sign Internally regular IE phrase elist Constituent of a regular phrase word [ ]sign Constituent of internally irregular IE word [ ]sign Constituent of internally regular IE word [ ]sign Constituent output of DR word elist

Fig.10 Possible COLL values An internally regular IE from our example data is spill the beans. In terms of flexibility, the phrase exhibits behaviour very similar to free combinations. But still, topicalization and relativization are not allowed. As a COLL value of the LEs of spill and beans is specified the context of appearance of the IE. It accounts for the above mentioned inflexibilities. The minimal clause of the IE in case of topicalization doesn’t satisfy the required context of occurrence specified in the LEs of the constituents. Therefore, this operation is excluded. Analogously, relativization is also excluded because after the extraction of the beans its semantic contribution is absent from the minimal clause of the verb spill. More detailed explanation of these phenomena is to be found on page 341 of the paper. And here are the LEs for spill (Fig.11) and beans (Fig.12):

[ ]( )( )

( ) ( )( )@ @ @ @

to

@ @ @

S L CONT .... the : ...beans .... ...spill , ....

E 1 E 2 E 3

PHON spill

HEAD CAT 1 SUBCAT NP,NP, PPS L

CONT .spill ,

COLL 2

and 2e

signw

word

verb

y x x y

υ υ υ

λ λ

′′ ′′⎡ ⎤⎣ ⎦

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥′′⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦

( )...

and minimal-clause 2 , 1

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦

Fig11 LE of the idiomatic version of spill

14

( )

( ) ( )( )@ @ @ @

@ @

S L CONT .... the : ...beans .... ...spill , .... ...

E 1 E 2

PHON beans

HEAD CAT 1 SUBCAT DetS L CONT .beans

COLL 2

and 2

and min

e

signw

word

noun

x x

υ υ υ

λ

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥′′ ′′⎡ ⎤⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥′′⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦

( )imal-clause 2 , 1

Fig.12 LE of the idiomatic version of beans The last of our examples is the support verb construction make a difference (Fig.13,14). Its distributional requirements are in terms of co-occurrence of the constituents. For the verb make a new semantic constant make″ is introduced. The COLL value of the constituents specifies the context requirements of the IE. Sailer assumes that for the support verbs a concrete word must be specified as a direct object of the head and not only a CONTENT value. Therefore the support verb makes a restriction on the phonology of the head of its direct object.

( )

( )

( )

@

S L 3

PHON diff

E 1 E 2 E 3 E 4 E 5wordPHON make

HEAD verbCAT 1 SS LOC SUBCAT NP,NP LOC 3

CONT x y.make'' x,y

COLL 2

and dominate 2 , 4

and 4

and lexical-head 4 , 5

and 5

λ λ

⎡ ⎤⎣ ⎦

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦

[ ]erence

S L C HEAD noun⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦

Fig.13 LE of the support verb make

( )( ) ( )

( )

@ @

@ @ @ @

E 1 E 2wordPHON difference

HEAD nounCAT 1 SUBCAT SS LOC CONT x.difference' x

COLL 2 SS LOC CONT.......difference' ....make'' ,

and minimal clause 2 , 1

ew w

λ

υ

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦

Fig.14 LE of the support verb direct object difference

15

Now, what we can say in short about Sailer’s analysis is that its great advantage is its simplicity, since after some minimal changes and the introducing of a single attribute to account both for distinguishing the IE from regular phrases and capturing the distributional restrictions of the IEs, a great range of collocational data can get a representation into the formal grammar. The critique of the theory comes from the fact that it appears to be too strong and unrestrictive. As the whole utterance is made available for lexical elements, any sort of restriction could be stated as collocational. He, therefore, suggests that the mechanism be used only in cases where the traditional assumptions of formal grammar cannot handle the distributional phenomena. Söhn’s analysis follows in the major part that of Sailer, but in order to make it more restrictive, he adopts an earlier version of the COLL attribute which can take as value only local information. He also borrows ideas from Krenn and Erbach’s analysis – the ability for a head to select a certain word - but in a much modified way. 4. The approach of Söhn (2005) The area of IEs on which Söhn concentrates is the idiomatic VPs without literal meaning. Such entities contain at least one word which is used in language only within the frame of the IE. An example in English is headway which is used only in the support verb construction make headway and can be attributed the meaning “progress” and the whole expression “make progress” respectively. These words are called cranberry words and do not have a literal counterpart. Since the cranberry words function just as all other words with distributional restrictions, the appropriate analysis for them is determined by the nature of the IE in which they appear. The theory of Söhn is based on the distinction between decomposable and non-decomposable idiomatic expressions. Decomposable are those IEs in which meaning can be derived by a combination of the meanings of their constituents like spill the beans, pull strings, make headway, make difference. And on thecontrary, the non-decomposable do not have a meaning which is a regular combination of the meanings of the parts. These definitions already sound familiar, since they fully correspond to those responsible for the classification of idioms into metaphorical and unanalysable in Krenn and Erbach’s analysis. The different properties of IEs are determined according to their behaviour toward some morphological, lexical, syntactic and semantic criteria. As morphological and lexical criteria are mentioned, the “frozenness” of some IEs, some anomalies in the morphological structure of such elements, the presence of bound words or the type of the verb in the IVPs, i.e. whether it is a main or a support verb. The syntactic criteria are based on the different syntactic operations that for which an expression allows. Such are passivization, nominalization, the possibility of imperative forms, negation, reference, modification and quantification. The semantic criteria considered are the motivation and insightfulness, metaphorization, and of course compositionality. Another possible classification proposed is the distinction between idiomatic and partly idiomatic uses of expressions. Apart from the suggested criteria for classification of IEs, he discusses also sociolinguistic and cognitive aspects of the phraseology. Söhn proposes an analysis which aims to handle decomposable and non-decomposable IVPs with unique lexemes, but his theory is general enough to handle also many other types of IEs. The approach combines concepts both from subcategorization analyses like those from Krenn and Erbach (1994), for example the possibility for a head to select a certain word (LISTEME) and from the theory of Sailer inherits the idea of specifying the context of occurrence of a word (COLL). COLL in the last version of Sailer (2003) is too unrestrictive. Söhn thinks that with specifying the complete clause as the possible context of appearance a

16

lot of the locally contained information is missed. Therefore, he adopts an earlier version of the COLL attribute introduced in the work of Richter/Sailer (1999). There the possible values of the COLL list are barriers. A barrier contains local information and specifies the possible linguistic structure (unit) within which the idiomatic constituent should be realized. The version of COLL which is used in Söhn’s analysis is intended to be much more restrictive than the one introduced in Sailer (2003). But the purpose of the feature stays the same, and namely to restrict the environment in which an idiomatic constituent may occur. In this approach too, COLL is a sign feature and its value is a list. The difference is that here the possible barrier is not only the complete clause as in Sailer (2003) but barriers can be also NPs, PPs, VPs , utterances.

32) LOC-LIC barrier

local⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦

Complete-clause utterance xp ……. np vp pp Here is a more formal representation of these differences: 33) Value of the COLL attribute (Sailer’s version)

[ ]sign 34) Value of the COLL attribute (Söhn’s version)

LOC-LIC barrier

local⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦

The barrier objects have the attribute LOCAL-LICENSER (LOC-LIC), the value of which is of sort local. Due to those barriers the distributional restrictions of a word are specified in its lexical entry and will be obliged to appear only within the specified context. A barrier has to be minimal and dominate the word. All this is assured by the LICENCING PRINCIPLE (LIP): 35) LISENCING-PRINCIPLE (LIP): For each barrier object on the COLL list of a sign x and for each phrase z: the LOCAL value of z is identical with the LOC-LIC value, iff z dominates x, z can be identified as the barrier specified and z dominates no sign y which in turn dominates x and forms an equivalent barrier. 36) The formal representation of LIP in case of a single vp-barrier will be:

17

( ) ( )( ) ( ) ( )

LOC-LIC 4 SS LOC 42 3

1 , 3 dominate 3 , 1 is_vp 3COLL 2

5 dominate 3 , 5 dominate 5 , 1 is_vp 5

vp phrase

signiff

⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦ ⎣ ⎦

⎛ ⎞∧⎜ ⎟

⎡ ⎤ ⎜ ⎟∃ ∀ ∧ ∧⎢ ⎥ ⎜ ⎟

⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦ ⎜ ⎟¬∃ ∧ ∧⎝ ⎠

As the barrier object on the COLL list must fulfil the local requirements and the LIP, we can say that Söhn has succeeded in solving the problem with the unrestrictedness and lack of locality of the Sailer’s version of COLL. Perhaps, attempting to restrict the too powerful COLL version of Sailer (2003), Söhn has achieved the opposite effect and has made his analysis too restrictive. An important detail in his theory is that the elements on the COLL list, in contrast to Sailer (2003), may be more than one and are represented as conjunctions or disjunctions. This results from the fact that the information specified as a value of COLL is too local and in some cases a single barrier is not enough to account for the distributional restrictions of IEs. Therefore, other barriers should be added. Here comes also a technical problem for which Söhn doesn’t provide a formalized solution in his paper. It concerns the so important for the analysis dominance relation. A relation can operate only on objects which are lower in the structure from the level on which they are called. Therefore, a word cannot theoretically specify the barrier which is higher in the structure, because when a certain relation like is_vp is required, it doesn’t have access to this phrase, as it is higher in the tree. In that way each node which is higher in the structure than this word can be its barrier. Söhn proposes two possible solutions for this problem (p. 102), but doesn’t develop any of those to a formal representation which accounts for this part of his analysis. An important characteristic of idiomatic expressions is the co-occurrence requirements of their constituents. This motivates an analysis which has the means for the head element in an IE to select a particular word as its co-occurrence partner. A possible solution is the LEXEME feature of Krenn and Erbach (1994) but as we already discussed in ch.2, it is quite criticized for some problems it poses and it is obvious that this is not the proper mechanism to express those kind of restriction. Therefore, Söhn introduces another feature for his theory- LISTEME. The term listeme has been introduced by Di Sciullo and Williams (1998) and represent the property that a sign takes part in the lexicon. Söhn specifies LISTEME as a head feature, more precisely, below CATEGORY. In that way its value will be available for selection. Also, the LISTEME value of a projection will be the same as the one of the head, because being a HEAD feature its percolation is licensed by the HEAD-FEATURE PRINCIPLE. In order to handle pronominalization, small changes in the theory are made, so that a coindexed pronoun takes not only the INDEX but also the LISTEME value from its antecedent. For the cases of non-coindexed pronomina an additional feature PRO-LISTEME is introduced. The idea is that if a pronoun is coindexed, its LISTEME value will be the same as the one of its antecedent and if it is not coindexed, the pronoun has a LISTEME value identical to its PRO-LISTEME, i.e. ‘it’, ‘she’ and so on. In the analysis pronominalization is handled by an additional specification in the structure of the LEs which defines a nominal element as referential or not. The handling of pronominalization here is an advantage over the theory of Sailer, because he doesn’t come out with any mechanism dealing with this problem and impossible reference cannot be blocked from occurrence. The analysis takes two possible directions, depending on the classification of the IE into decomposable and non-decomposable. We will first consider the analysis of the decomposable IEs.

18

As already discussed, those elements have a decomposable meaning into the meanings of their constituents. If the words in such an IE are given their idiomatic meaning and are represented by an additional relevant lexical entry, then there wouldn’t be a problem for those words to combine semantically and syntactically following the regular principles of grammar into the required IE. But these words can usually occur with this meaning only within the IE and this property should be declared in their individual lexical entries. They will also have their specific LISTEME value, which automatically helps us to imagine them as independent words. Then comes the question of how the LISTEME values of the idiomatic and literal version of a word are distinguished. This is done quite easily by the method of numbering: for example “spill” in the literal meaning will be the listeme spill1 and in the idiomatic-spill2. Of course, the distributional requirements of the constituents of decomposable IEs are specified on their COLL lists as barriers. Informally explained, what occurs is the head of the phrase will be required to subcategorize for a word or its projection with a specific LISTEME value. On the COLL list of the non-head of the IE will be specified the barrier of appearance of the phrase and the listeme which heads this barrier should also be the head of this complement daughter of the IE. Let’s see an example which portrays all this (Fig.15). If we try to distribute the meaning of the IVP spill the beans among its parts, then spill will be attributed the meaning “reveal” and beans “secret”, information. The verb spill subcategorizes for the definite NP the beans.

[ ] 2

2

nounCAT HEADdef LOC LISTEME beanCONTENT INDEX NUM

PHON spill

HEAD LISTEME spill

SS LOC CAT SUBCAT NP,NP

plural

word

verb

⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦

Fig.15 LE of the idiomatic version of spill Bean2 is a noun which has a non-empty COLL-list (Fig.16).

[ ]2

-COLL

LOC-LIC CAT HEAD LISTEME spillcomplete clause⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤

⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦

Fig.16 COLL list value of the idiomatic version of spill With such a barrier processes like passivization or relativization are allowed. Topicalization and relativization have to be explicitly excluded by a minor additional specification in the DR that it shouldn’t apply on the particular word. The other decomposable IE from our examples is make a difference (Fig.17). What is interesting for the distinction between the analyses of Sailer and Söhn is the specification in the LE of difference (Fig.18) that it could be an antecedent of a pronoun.

19

[ ]

3

w o rdP H O N m ak e

verbH E A D

L IS T E M E m ak e

P H O N d iffe ren ceC A T S S L O C

S U B C A T N P ,N P L O C n o u nS L C H E A D

L IS T E M E d iffe ren ce

C O N T M A IN m ak e

⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥

⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦⎢⎢ ′′⎣ ⎦

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎥⎢ ⎥⎥⎢ ⎥⎥⎢ ⎥⎥⎣ ⎦

Fig.17 LE of the support verb make

[ ]

[ ]2

wordPHON difference

nounHEAD

LISTEME differenceCAT SS LOC SUBCAT

INDEX PHI referentialCONT

MAIN difference

complete-clauseCOLL

LOC-LIC CAT HEAD LISTEME make

⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥

⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥′⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦

⎡⎢⎣

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎤⎢ ⎥⎥⎢ ⎥⎦⎣ ⎦

Fig.18 LE of the direct object difference The analysis of non-decomposable IEs in Söhn’s work follows closely the one proposed by Sailer (2003). He also introduces the term PLE in order to refer to the representation of an IE which meaning cannot be derived from the meaning of its parts. Again, for these entities the regular principles of grammar are not in charge. All such principles are changed to apply only on phrases with an empty COLL list. Söhn also adopts the LEXICON PRINCIPLE which summarizes and licences all kinds of lexical entries-PLEs and words, i.e. elements which have a ne-list as a value of the COLL attribute. The COLL value of regular phrases and words which are output of DRs is e-list. The Söhn’s way of argumentation of such common treatment is that the set of all LISTEME values covers all elements in the Lexicon, since each LE or PLE has an individual LISTEME value. So, after the same trivial changes as in Sailer (2003) of all principles are made, they will not apply on the PLEs because their COLL values are ne-lists. The distributional restrictions of the PLEs are specified in the way their lexical entries are built. The representation of our non-decomposable examples into the analysis of Söhn is quite similar with that in Sailer’s. A difference is the way passivization is excluded. In the PLE for shoot the breeze (Fig.19), the breeze is specified as an accusative object. That means that it can not appear as a subject of a passive sentence. Söhn assumes a trace analysis of extraction. DRs cannot apply on PLEs and we cannot block operations like topicalization, passivization, etc. on them. In the case if non-decomposable IEs, this is done by encoding them in the DTRS structure of PLEs.

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[ ]( )[ ]

with4 5

2

phrase

PHON 1 2

3HEAD LISTEME shoot-the-breezeCAT

SS LOC SUBCAT NP , PP

CONT MAIN chat

head-compl-struc

word

DTRS H-DTR PHON 1 shoot

3 verbHEAD LISTEME shootSS LOC CAT

⊕

⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥′⎣ ⎦

( )

2

SUBCAT 4 , 5 , 6

PHON 2

HEAD nounSS 6 LOC CAT

SUBCAT

PHON breeze

CASE accN-DTR H-DTR HEAD LISTEME breezeSS LOC

DTRS SUBCAT

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦

⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦

⎡

⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥

⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦

PHON theN-DTR

SS Det

COLL elist

COLL nelist

⎡⎢⎢⎢⎢⎢⎢⎢⎢⎢

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦

⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦

⎣

⎤⎥⎥⎥⎥⎥⎥⎥⎥⎥

⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎦

Fig.19 PLE of the IE shoot the breeze

[ ]

4 5

2

4 5

phrase

PHON 1 2

HEAD 3CAT

SC NP , NP

SYN LOC CONT MAIN consider

word

H-DTR PHON 1 take

verbHEAD 3

LISTEME takeSS LOC CAT DTRS SUBCAT NP , NP , 6

⊕

⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥

⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥

′⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦

[ ]

phrase

N-DTR PHON 2 into account

SS 6 CAT HEAD LISTEME into-account

COLL nelist

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦

Fig.20 PLEof the IE take into account

[ ]

phrasePHON spick and span

adjCAT HEAD LISTEM E spick-and-span

SS LOC XSELL 3

CONT M AIN brightCOLL nelist

⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥′⎣ ⎦⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥⎣ ⎦

Fig.21 PLE of the IE spick and span

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As we can see from of spick and span (Fig.21) and and the “frozen” complement into account (Fig.20), completely fixed elements are represented and treated as one unit and their phonology and relevant meaning are specified. With this we can finish our part about the analysis of Söhn (2005). Its problems appear to be its restrictiveness and technical details which formalization remains unclear. 5. Comparison 5.1 Classification of IE and Range of Data Analysed After introducing a short description of the three analyses, this chapter is intended to account for sketching the similarities and differences, advantages and problems occurring in the theories for handling IEs of Krenn and Erbach (1994), Sailer (2003) and Söhn (2005). Let’s summarize what we have already discussed. All of the theories start with explaining the data and the range of phenomena which could be handled by the proposed analyses. Krenn and Erbach’s work tries to give an account for quite a large variety of IEs starting from completely “frozen” ones which receive multi-word-lexeme representation, then discussing those IEs which are unanalysable but show some level of flexibility and then quite briefly mention how the metaphorical ones are to be analysed, and finally they suggest an analysis of support verb constructions. The range of data discussed in the theory of Sailer is not much different. He proposes few criteria of regularity and bases his theory on the distinction between internally regular and internally irregular IEs. In his paper, he concentrates mainly on IEs which have a VP structure, but the analysis is so powerful that as he points out in ch. 8, p.348 “we have chances to capture even the most exotic context restrictions”. Even though it sounds quite promising and is maintained as a great advantage of his work, the unrestrictiveness of the analysis is what turns out as an object of major critique. Söhn suggests a lot more criteria for the classification of IEs, but builds his analysis on the distinction between decomposable and non-decomposable ones. He takes into account morphological, lexical, semantic and syntactic markers relevant to the idiomatic cases of German and its quite complex syntax. In this aspect, Söhn has considered many aspects and covered greater area in explaining the characteristics of IEs. He also pays greater attention to idiomatic VPs, but his analysis is also general enough to handle other types of idiomaticity. More or less the most important classification feature of IEs for all three analyses turns out to be their compositionality. In the paper of Krenn and Erbach the presence or lack of this property in idioms is designated by their classification into metaphorical and unanalysable. Much the same is the leading criterion in Söhn’s analysis, but there the IEs are divided into decomposable and non-decomposable. But in Sailer’s approach also the aspect of syntactic regularity of the structures of the IEs is taken into account. He distinguishes between internally regular IEs which are regular semantic and syntactic combinations in case their constituents are attributed a meaning, and internally irregular which meaning has no relation with the meanings of the constituents and/or doesn’t have a proper syntactic structure. It is not certain, whether we should think of it as a difference, since if an expression doesn’t have a clear syntactic structure, then the distribution of its meaning among its parts also becomes a problem. In such a case everything comes again to the point of the meaning compositionality. Another issue in Krenn and Erbach’s approach is that they provide analysis explicitly for completely “frozen” idioms. The difference between completely “frozen” and more flexible IEs turns out to be very important, as the first group of IEs receives multi-word-lexeme treatment and the second a unified syntactic analysis by subcategorization where only the semantic part is individual for the different types of IEs.

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Classification of the IE according to the analysis of: Idiomatic

Expression Krenn and Erbach (2004) Sailer (2003) Söhn (2005) Shoot the breeze Unanalysable Internally irregular Non-decomposableTake into account Unanalysable Internally irregular Non-decomposableSpick and span Unanalysable Internally irregular Non-decomposableSpill the beans Metaphorical Internally regular Decomposable Make a difference Support-verb constructions Internally regular Decomposable Fig.22 Classification of IEs according to the different analyses 5.2 IEs Listed in the Lexicon

Krenn and Erbach propose that totally fixed idioms like spick and span, by and large and others should be listed in the lexicon as multi-word-lexemes with the relevant meaning and phonology. In the other two theories such entities would also be listed in the lexicon but not as words. They will be represented as Phrasal Lexical Entries, i.e. on phrasal level. The term PLE accounts for the analysis of internally irregular and non-decomposable IEs in the works of Sailer and Söhn respectively, but they cover not only completely “frozen” IEs, but also the type of data which will be referred as unanalysable idioms in Krenn and Erbach (1994). 5.3 Analysis of Metaphorical, Internally Regular and Decomposable IEs

In all of the three analyses the terms metaphorical, internally regular, and decomposable refer to the same group of idiomatic expressions. Also, in all of the approaches, they are considered as build up from words which when assigned the proper meaning can combine into the meaning of the IE following the usual principles of grammar. The constituents receive lexical entries with the relevant meaning and specification of the distributional restrictions.

Treatment in the analysis of: Idiomatic Expression Krenn and Erbach (2004) Sailer (2003) Söhn (2005)

Shoot the breeze Unanalysable IE PLE PLE Take into account Unanalysable IE PLE PLE Spick and span Multi-word lexeme PLE PLE Spill the beans Metaphorical IE Internally regular

IE Decomposable IE

Make a difference Metaphorical IE Internally regular IE

Decomposable IE

Fig.23 Different analysis directions 5.4 Specify the Co-Occurrence Restrictions This is also the place where the major differences in the three approaches lie. Apart form the multi-word-lexemes, Krenn and Erbach (1994) propose an analysis of more flexible IEs by subcategorization in order to satisfy their occurrence restrictions by making the selection of a particular word available. This is done via the LEXEME feature. But the use of this

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attribute shows to be both technically and conceptionally problematic. Here the analysis of Sailer shows much different behaviour. He specifies the occurrence context of a word as a complete-clause on the COLL-list in its LE. But the analysis is found too strong and unrestrictive. Söhn takes ideas from both theories, from Krenn and Erbach (1994)-the ability for head to select for a particular word via the feature LISTEME, and from Sailer his theory inherits the COLL attribute but in a much more restrictive version (Richter/Sailer, 1999), so that the information on the list is local. So, the LISTEME is used for accounting the co-occurrence restrictions of the idiomatic constituents and the COLL is responsible for specifying the barrier of appearance of the IE. If the disadvantage of Sailer’s theory is that it is too powerful and unrestrictive, the opposite effect could be found for the analysis of Söhn, namely to be too restrictive, because the local information specified on the barriers might not account fully for all distributional requirements of an IE. In such cases additional barriers must be specified. So, whether this is the best way to handle the distributional restrictions of IEs is in question for both theories. At least the technical aspect of the analysis of Sailer appears to be correct, whereas, technical details in Söhn’s theory remain unclear (dominance relation). 5.5 Flexibility of IEs

As we know all IEs exhibit different level of flexibility. Of course, it is natural that the metaphorical/internally regular/decomposable IEs usually allow for most of the syntactic and semantic operations which are also typical for the free combinations. This fact is explained by their semantic properties. When the constituents of such an IE are attributed a meaning, they regularly contribute for combining the meaning of the whole phrase. That will mean that each complement in the expression can be assigned a thematic role. Having in mind these facts, in all three theories the assumption is that the regular principles of grammar should account for the behaviour of such entities. In cases, however, when some of the usual semantic or syntactic operations is not allowed for a definite IE, then there should be a way to block it in its representation. In the theory of Krenn and Erbach (1994) a great importance is given to the thematic roles which are assigned by each verb to its complements. Processes like topicalization, relativization, pronominalization and others are explained in terms of these Θ-roles. Those NPs which have some semantic contribution and are assigned a Θ-role, can be pronominalized, relativized, topicalized and in general allow for all processes common for free combinations. The authors do not really give an explanation how metaphorical idioms should be treated with respect to their flexibility, since the only thing they mention is that they assume a regular combination for such expressions and the usual principles of grammar are in charge. But this is not enough to account for their behaviour, since we have many IEs like spill the beans for instance, which is metaphorical/internally regular/decomposable, the verb spill assigns its complement the beans with a non-empty thematic role, but still topicalization is not allowed for it. Perhaps, if the authors have the means to handle with the problem of the different flexibility of metaphorical idioms, they are not discussed in their paper. Still, passivization, internal modification are accounted for by some specification in the lexical entries. The case with the unanalysable IEs is easier, since the mechanism with the Θ-roles should work properly for them, as usually one or more of the complements of the IE has an empty thematic role and therefore the IE cannot undergo pronominalization, relativization and other semantic processes. Other inflexibilities can be specified in the lexical entries. As we know, in this aspect the theory of Sailer has an advantage, because it can handle all the kinds of distributional restrictions of IEs. For the case of internally regular IEs this is done by specifying the context of occurrence of a word in terms of complete-clause on the COLL

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list and with the use of relations. Also, some restrictions are performed by a specification in the LE too. The distributional restrictions of internally irregular IEs are specified in the nature of the PLEs and when this is not enough, COLL is used again to express the possible environment of occurrence of the phrase. It should also be mentioned that Sailer assumes traceless analysis for his theory and this is a factor for blocking topicallization and relativization. The idea of the COLL attribute is made more restrictive and local in Söhn’s theory. The barriers of occurrence can be also XPs and utterances and not only complete-clauses as in Sailer’s analysis. Moreover, Sailer’s version of COLL takes as a value only one element, while the COLL list in Söhn (2005) can contain more than one. This is done by a disjunction or conjunction. This is a consequence of the fact that the more restrictive the barrier, the more restrictive the context of appearance of a word is. Therefore, in order to explain all possible occurrences of a word, a single barrier might not be enough. But here too, like in Sailer (2003) the distributional restrictions of decomposable IEs are accounted by stating the context of appearance on the COLL list and some small specifications in the LEs and those of the non-decomposable are specified analogously to Sailer (2003) in the way the PLEs are built. In contrast to Sailer, Söhn assumes trace analysis, which is logical having in the mind the complex German syntax for which the analysis was originally planned. He proposes that some processes like passivization, nominalization can be blocked for some decomposable IEs by additionally specifying the DRs not to apply on the relevant constituents. An important advantage of Söhn (2005) over Sailer’s work in terms of accounting for the distributional properties of IEs is that he proposes a mechanism to allow or block pronominalization of a certain nominal element. An additional specification in its structure whether or not it is referential is all that has to be made. 5.6 Account of Keeping Generality Krenn and Erbach’s analysis requires the introducing of an additional lexical entry for each idiomatic use of a word. In the theories of Sailer and Söhn new lexical entries are introduced only for the parts of the internally regular and decomposable IEs. The PLEs are entities in both approaches which are listed in the lexicon. But their constituents are assumed to be with their original meaning and additional lexical entries are not specified for them, since relevant meaning cannot be attributed to them anyway. This is an advantage concerning the issue of generality. As could be noticed, the theories of Sailer and Söhn seem to be much more economical in this aspect than the work of Krenn and Erbach. 5.7 Successfulness Having briefly compared the analyses of Krenn and Erbach (1994), Sailer (2003) and Söhn (2005) it is relevant to summarize in which aspects they are successful and which not. The theory of Krenn and Erbach (1994) faces many problems in handling the distributional restrictions of IEs. Obviously, the other two approaches account better for the discussed phenomena. While the approach of Sailer (2003) is criticized for being too powerful and unrestrictive, the approach of Söhn can be criticized for being too restrictive. On the other hand, the analysis of Sailer is at least technically successful. While, even though trying to make an enhancement of Sailer’s approach and coming up with good ideas, Söhn has left technical details unclear. Perhaps, many of the problems that are present in the three analyses can be found a solution. But if we have to make a conclusion about the facts we discussed up to this point, it will be that technically only the approach of Sailer turns out to be satisfactory

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and even though its unrestrictiveness puts the conceptional side of the theory in question, it is capable of expressing all kind of distributional restrictions. 6. Summary

In the paper we discussed three analyses handling idiomatic expressions-the one of Krenn and Erbach (1994), Sailer (2003) and Söhn (2005). In the previously mentioned order we explained the most important details in each of the approaches. Krenn and Erbach propose a subcategorization analysis and introduce the feature LEXEME in order to make the selection for a particular word possible. Their theory faces many technical and conceptional difficulties. Therefore, it was concluded that their analysis is not the best way the distributional requirements of IEs should be accounted for. Sailer suggests an analysis in which a sign feature COLL is introduced. The distributional requirements of the IEs are specified as a context of occurrence on the list value of the new attribute. The analysis is criticized for being too powerful and unrestrictive, as all kind of distributional restrictions could be explained as collocational. Söhn combines concepts both from Krenn and Erbach (1994) and Sailer (2003). He gives a modified version of LEXEME - the LISTEME feature and restricts the information on the COLL list to local. The analysis shows to be in cases too restrictive and some technical details are left unclear. As we see, even though many attempts are made for capturing the different irregularities of idiomatic expressions, many problems concerning it are waiting for solution, which is a good motivation for a future research.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Erbach, Gregor(1992).Head–Driven Lexical Representation of Idioms in HPSG, Universität des Saarlandes Krenn, Brigitte and Erbach, Gregor (1994). Idioms and Support Verb Constructions. In J. Nerbonne, K. Netter, and C. Pollard (hrsg.), Geman in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar Nunberg, Geoffrey, Sag, Ivan A. and Wasow, Thomas (1994).Idioms. Language 70, S.491-538 Pollard, Carl and Sag, Ivan A. (1994). Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Richter, Frank und Sailer, Manfred (1999)a. LF Conditions on Expressions of Ty2: An HPSG Analysis of Negative Concord in Polish. In R.D. Borsley and A. Przepiorkowski (Hrsg.),Slavic in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, S.247-282, CSLI Publications, Stanford, CA. Richter, Frank und Sailer, Manfred (1999)b. Sentential negation in French and conditions on Logical Form in HPSG.In proceedings of the 6th International conference on HPSG, Edinburgh, Scotland. Richter, Frank und Sailer, Manfred(2003). Cranberry Words in Formal Grammar. In C. Beyssade, O.Bonami, P. Cabredo, Hofherr und F.Corblin (Hrsg.), Empirical Issues in Formal Syntax and Semantics 4, Band 4, S. 155-171, Presses se l’Universite de Paris-Sorbonne Sailer, Manfred (2003). Combinatorial Semantics and Idiomatic Expressions in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Phil. Dissertation (2000). Arbeitspapiere des SFB 340, Nummer 161, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen Söhn, Jan-Philipp (2005). Über Bärendienste und erstaunte Bauklötze. Idiome ohne freie Lesart in der HPSG, Phil. Dissertation, Universität Jena.

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