A Cognitive Approach To English Idioms

Idioms are indispensable to each language. It is hard to imagine a language that has no idioms of its own. "Idiomaticity is important for this reason, if for no other, that there is so much of it in every language." (Weinreich 1969)â‘  Since idioms are hardly marginal in English, many linguists have carried out researches to better understand them. Some study their semantic and syntactic features (e.g. Chomsky, Nunberg, Cruse), some hypothesize the processing models for their comprehension (e.g. Schweigert, Gibbs, Cacciari), and some others (e.g. Fernando) elaborate on the functional uses of idioms. Those who study the formal and semantic features carry out their research from the pure linguistic perspective, while those who propose the different processing models of idioms are more psychology-oriented. Despite the different perspectives from which they study the idioms, these researchers seem to support either the noncompositional view or compositional view. Supporters of the first view believe that the literal meanings of the constituents of an idiom have nothing to do with the figurative meaning of the idiom. And they believe the relation between the literal meaning and figurative meaning is arbitrary, and thus idioms are unanalyzable. Proponents of the second view believe that the literal meanings of the constituents do contribute to the overall idiomatic meaning of the idiom, and therefore, idioms are analyzable. They both seem to have found evidences in experiments to support their views.Adopting a cognitive approach to studying the creation of idiomsand people's learning and use of idioms, this thesis tries to find out what leads to this disagreement and how to compromise it. The author holds that the relationship between the literal meaning and the figurative meaning is far from arbitrary. Instead, idioms are motivated as the creation of idioms is the product of human cognition. At the same time, idioms run along a continuum from the analyzable to the unanalyzable as it reflects a more fundamental continuum ranging between universal conceptual knowledge and culture-specific knowledge. What's more, this thesis discusses the role that conceptual metaphors play in people's comprehension of familiar idioms and language learners' strategies in the process of comprehension and the use of unfamiliar idioms.As a beginner of linguistic research, the author tries to put forward a different point of view in the hope that the gap between noncompositional view and compositional view could be bridged. At the same time, the author hopes that the thesis could present a useful motivation to our teaching and learning of English idioms.