Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • The syntactic flexibility of German and English idioms: Evidence from acceptability rating experiments

  • MARTA WIERZBA, J.M.M. BROWN, GISBERT FANSELOW
  • Journal:
    Journal of Linguistics / Volume 60 / Issue 2 / April 2024
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    14 April 2023, pp. 431-468
    Print publication:
    April 2024
    • Article
      • You have access
      • Open access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation

  • It is controversial which idioms can occur with which syntactic structures. For example, can Mary kicked the bucket (figurative meaning: ‘Mary died’) be passivized to The bucket was kicked by Mary? We present a series of experiments in which we test which structures are compatible with which idioms in German (for which there are few experimental data so far) and English, using acceptability judgments. For some of the tested structures – including German left dislocation, scrambling, and prefield fronting – it is particularly contested to what extent they are restricted by semantic factors and, as a consequence, to what extent they are compatible with idioms. In our data, these structures consistently showed similar limitations: they were fully compatible with one subset of our test idioms (those categorized as semantically compositional) and degraded with another (those categorized as non-compositional). Our findings only partly align with previously proposed hierarchies of structures with respect to their compatibility with idioms.