21.Homonymy. Types of homonyms.

Basic distinction between polysemy and

homonymy.

Traditionally homonyms are held to designate different words (lexemes) with the
same form. Even though they have the same shape, homonyms are regarded as
distinct lexemes, primarily because they are semantically unrelated and have
different origins. So, according to McArthur, lexicographers generally take the view
that homonymy relates to different words whose forms have converged while
polysemy relates to one word whose meanings have diverged or radiated. 
For example, the lexemes tear, which means ‘pulling or ripping apart’ and another
orthographic doublet tear, denoting ‘the drop of salty liquid that comes from the
eyes when someone weeps’ have different origins. They are both from Old English,
the first from teran and the second from tẻar (Jackson, Zé Amvella 2007: 72). 
Lexemes that share the same spelling, but have a different etymology, are termed
homographs (a Greek word meaning ‘same (homo) + writing’), e.g. wind, live,
sow, lead, etc.

1. The strong wind prevented us from boating. Don’t forget to wind your
watch.
2. They used to live in a small country cottage. My favourite singer is
giving a live concert tonight. 
3. There was a sow with five piglets on my uncle’s farm. The farmers
sow the seeds in spring.  
 
Homonyms are not a homogenous group, however. The sameness of shape, which
characterizes homonyms, can refer to different aspects of their form. Thus, we
distinguish between homographs (lead, row), lexemes that are spelt the same but
pronounced differently, and homophones, which demonstrate the reverse situation:
they have an identical sound form, but are spelt differently (flour – flower; knead –
need, sight – site; rain – reign – rein). Homographs are not very numerous in
English; much more common seem to be the homophones: e.g. air/heir,
groan/grown, pray/prey, whether/weather, etc.

Even fewer in number are absolute homonyms, which are supposed to meet the
following three conditions:
(1) they are unrelated in meaning;
(2) all their forms are identical (belong to the same word class);
(3) the identical forms are grammatically equivalent. 
Here are some examples of absolute homonyms: 
band (n) – a company of musicians vs.  band (n) – a trip or loop of something;        
punch (n) – a forceful hit with a fist vs. punch (n) – a cold or hot drink made by
mixing fruit juices, pieces of fruit etc.

On the other hand, there are also partial homonyms, i.e. cases where (a) there is
identity of (minimally) one form and (b) one or two, but not all three of the above
conditions are satisfied. E.g., the verbs ‘find’ and ‘found’ share the form found, but
not finds, finding, or founds, founding, etc. The two homonymous verbs ‘lie (lay,
lain)’ and ‘lie (lied, lied)’coincide only in their initial form. It is worthy of note that
there is a correlation between points (2) and (3), which means that the failure to
satisfy (2) correlates with the failure to satisfy (3). This is not common to all the
languages, but it is certainly common to English. 
Partial homonyms are of two types: homophones and homographs. Homophones
are words identical in sound but different in spelling and meaning:
made  (adj) – formed  vs. maid  (n) – a female domestic servant;
bread  (n) – a common food made of baked flour vs. bred  (adj) – reared in a
special environment or way;
sum (n) – a particular amount of money vs. some (pronoun) – an unspecified
amount or number of smth. 
        Homographs, which  demonstrate a reverse situation, are words identical in
spelling but different in sound and meaning:
          row1 (n) – a number of persons or things in a line
          row2 (n) – a noisy acrimonious quarrel
          desert1 (v) – to leave empty or leave completely
           desert2 (n) – a large sandy piece of land where there is very little rain and
not much plant life. Some other examples include lead, row, bow, tear etc.

Homographs are not very numerous in English. Much more common seem to be the
homophones: e.g. air/heir, groan/grown, pray/prey, whether/weather, flour –
flower; knead – need etc.
         

English vocabulary is rich in the pairs and groups of homonyms. Their identical
forms are mostly accidental. The majority of homonyms coincided due to the
phonetic changes they underwent in the course of their development. In the process
of communication, they tend to be an encumbrance leading sometimes to confusion
and misunderstanding. Yet it is this very characteristic which makes them one of the
most important sources of popular humor producing pun.     

1. – My wife is an angel!                          
    – You are lucky! Mine is still alive.
1. An advertisement of the jeweler’s shop: “If you want to give her a ring, give
us a ring”.
2. A tailor guarantees to give each of his customers a perfect fit.
      4.  – Waiter!
      - Yes, sir. 
      - What’s this? 
       - It’s bean-soup, sir.
       - Never mind what it has been. I want to know what it is now.
             
Homonym clashes
As homonyms are words which share the same form, there might be a danger of
homonymous clashes in the sense that two words with absolutely different
meanings may both make sense in the same utterance. Consider the following
utterances: 
The night was short (the dark part of each 24 period)
The knight was short (a man with a high rank in the past who was trained to fight
while riding a horse)
Jane didn’t like the flour (the substance)
Jane didn’t like the flower (the plant).

The main reason for not having a homonym clash is not even the difference in word
class and the difference in spelling, but the difference in overall context. Consider
the following pairs of homonyms: lead (noun) vs. lead (verb), stick (verb) vs. stick
(noun). These words, apart from difference in meaning and the word class, can
hardly occur interchangeably in the same context. The distribution between such
words is complementary in the sense that the context, in which one word occurs,
does not presuppose the other word. Besides, since each member of the pair differs
in the word class, the choice of the one homonym instead of the other is determined
by the rules of syntax.

Homonyms do not present any harm to language since they belong to different word
classes (nose (noun) and knows (verb)), apart from that it is difficult to imagine the
context, in which both words could come together. Moreover, homonymy is a
source of humor, based on word play in which homonyms substitute each other or
are used in an inappropriate context.
Homonyms in English cause trouble for lexicographers, since they can be listed
either as separate headwords or under one headword. For example:
     hooker1 – a commercial fishing boat using hooks and lines instead of nets;
     hooker2 – a person or thing that hooks.
At first glance, it would be natural to include the meaning of hooker1 into a more
general meaning of hooker2. But the basic criterion lexicographers use to identify
homonyms (homographs) is etymology: if two or more different origins can be
identified for the same spelling, then the orthographic word is entered as many
types as there are different etymologies. In the case of hooker, the first homograph
is identified as a loanword from Dutch hoeker in the seventeenth century, and
second is the derivation by means of the suffix –er from the verb hook, which has
its origin in the Old English hoc.
 
Another example is the word line, which has three homographs based on the word
class membership – a noun, a verb and an adjective. It has entered four times into
LDOCE on the basis of etymology; it has its origin in Middle English linen, derived
from lin, the Old English for “flax”, which developed into modern English linen.
The other entries for line originate from Old French ligner, though this word goes
back to a Latin word meaning ‘made of flax’.
            

22.Jargon and slang.   Euphemisms and taboo.

«Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands, and goes to work.»
(Carl Sandburg)
Slang is normally defined as informal nonstandard vocabulary that is typically
composed of picturesque, metaphoric short-lived coinages and figures of speech that
are used to signal irreverence, group solidarity, humorous and playful disposition.

Jonathon Lighter defines slang as ‘informal, nonstandard and non-technical

vocabulary composed chiefly of novel-sounding synonyms for standard words
and phrases’ (Lighter 1994: XI).
The most salient characteristics of slang are generally believed to be the following:

1) Slang is considered to be alternative vocabulary, i.e. slang items usually refer to

objects, people, phenomena etc. in the real world that already have designations in
neutral vocabulary;

2) Slang primarily involves vocabulary; syntax, or sentence structure, on the other

hand, is not important in defining slang;

3) Connotation is far more important in defining slang items than denotation, cf.
Don’t worry about it vs. Don’t sweat it; man vs. dude (the dude that owns a
fancy car); With his qualifications, he had little chance of getting the job vs. He
tood a snowflake’s chance in hell of getting the job.

4) Slang is prone to over-lexicalization of some spheres of activity. What this

essentially means is that slang is particularly ‘hospitable’ to certain spheres of life,
but not others. For instance, drinking and alcohol, sex, bodily functions, social
relations, violence and crime are just some of the areas that are most often
‘targeted’ by slang users. By way of illustration, people taking drugs have been
variously called (depending on the type of drug they use) junkies, druggies, dope
heads, dopers, druggies, pill poppers, pot heads, dope heads, coke heads, smack
heads, meth heads, tweakers, crackpots, crack heads, space cadets, burnouts,
stoners, loner stoners, skanky skanks, to name just a few. Spheres of activity such
as foreign policy, banking, law, research and the like, on the other hand, do not
generate so much (if any) slang vocabulary.

5) Since irreverence and defiance often accompany slang, it is primarily generated

and used by the young (teenagers’ speech,as argued earlier, is noted for abundance of
slang). Although Variation in the lexicon some slang finds its way also into the
speech of people in their 30s and 40s, older people generally do not account for such
slang use).

6) Ephemerality is often considered a particular attribute of slang. By this we mean

that a large bulk of slang vocabulary has a very brief life span: slang items come and
go, sometimes on a daily basis. If we consider slang terms designating “excellent;
very good” that have been in use since the early 20th century, we find that there
has been a string of various words over the years beginning with bees’ knees,
cat’s pajamas (whiskers,
meow) in the 1920s, through aces, swell, keen, snazzy in the 30s, hot, fly, funky,
out of this world, keen in the 40s and 50s, far out, bitchin’, hip, groovy in the
60s, neat, fab, bangin’, gravy, in the 70s, wicked and then radical, tubular and
bitchin’ in the 80s, the bomb, phat, pimpin’, nice! In the 90s to a wide range of
words in current use, just a few of them being tight, fresh, sick apart from cool,
awesome and many others).

Although most of slang terms do not have staying power, some of them eventually
pass into the general vocabulary, others disappear for good and still others are
forgotten only to reappear some time later. Yet another scenario is that some items
grow so common that they eventually become the dominant, and sometimes the only,
way of saying something,
at which point they are usually regarded as mainstream usage (e.g. bluff). Slang terms
that become part of the mainstream, or conventional, vocabulary often bear little or
no association with their earlier lives as slang, e.g. rascal, flimsy, jeopardy,
crestfallen etc. Note should be taken, however, that in the case of taboo words, there
is rarely an expression which ever reaches acceptable usage.

The word booze meaning ‘liquor’, for instance, has existed in one form or another
since at
least the mid-1500s, and yet it somehow maintains its slangy appeal nearly five
centuries later. Bones as slang for “dice”, for example, was used by Chaucer in the
fourteenth century and is still part of the slang vocabulary. The same is true of slang
words like bitch (“to
complain”), bull (“to talk insincerely”), and many others.

7) The primary function of slang is to establish group relations and identity; to

separate one group of people from another; to differentiate the in-group from the out-
group; to share the insider-knowledge with the listeners and to show the speaker’s
attitude;

8) Use of slang by especially young people and more marginalized or less statusful
groups is often believed to have something to do with the fact that these groups are
known
to rebel against established institutions and, therefore, the language they speak. So
slang is often the result of defiance against standard language through the use of
terms that are not defined in standard language.

9) Above we talked about euphemism, which is intended to soften the crudeness

suggested by the referent. In slang, one frequently encounters the opposite
phenomenon, called
dysphemism, where a relatively neutral word is replaced with a harsher, more
offensive equivalent, e.g. calling a cemetery a boneyard, a doctor a quack, an
intellectual an egghead or a brainiac, and referring to electrocution as frying (a
prisoner). a group of people sharing similar interests and attitudes, producing feelings
of solidarity, community, and exclusivity. Out-group, respectively, is the opposite of
in-group.
10) Slang, as a form of expression that is primarily spoken, is less conservative than
standard language. The transitory aspect of slang, which was discussed above, results
in a slang term developing polysemy and being used in different meanings at the
same time. This is particularly true of short and clipped lexemes. For example, the
word pro, which has two major meanings: a) someone who is skilled at s/th, very
often sports, as in That guy is a real pro when it comes to baseball and b) short
for prostitute. But the lexeme has now developed a broader meaning, that of
“impressive; amazing; cool”: That videogame is so pro I want to buy it.

As to jargon, it is the term that most commonly overlaps with slang. As a result, the
two notions are often conflated. The term, however, should be taken to mean
specifically “the technical terms peculiar to specific occupations and
professions... Standard English that is unfamiliar beyond the limits of those
specialized fields for which it provides the recognized standard vocabulary”
(Lighter 1994:xvi). Any technical term that designates something only for the people
who are involved with it is jargon, not slang. Jargon sounds
meaningless to people outside its normal context of use. The main difference
between the two, according to Jonathon Lighter, is that a jargonism indicates a
referent, while slang “characterizes and often makes light of what it is referred
to” (Lighter 1994: xvi).

Examples of technical language that is separate from slang is medical jargon

such as PET or CAT scans, agonal referring to a major negative change in a
patient’s condition, diastolic (pressure during the relaxing of the heart) etc.
While different technical vocabularies do contain a fair share of slang words, like
gomer for doctors and bridge snake for construction workers, their specific technical
vocabulary is not slang.

The notion of “euphemism treadmill”.

A further important illustration of socially-motivated semantic change can be what

has been described by Steven Pinker as euphemism treadmill. A euphemism is a
word or an expression used in place of an offensive or unpleasant equivalent to
mitigate or soften the negative effect on the listener. The need for a euphemism arises
when a referent associated with social taboos needs to be named, or rather renamed as
the original designation is considered a taboo word. After a while, however, words
originally intended as euphemisms may degenerate into taboo words themselves by
losing their euphemistic value and acquiring the negative connotations of their
referents. Since, as a result, they can no longer soften the offensiveness attached to
the referent, a new euphemism usually springs into being. The following lexical
progression is sometimes cited as a classic example of euphemism treadmill. The
words idiot, imbecile, and moron were once neutral terms
for a developmentally delayed adult.

23.Multiword lexemes.
By way of a reminder, lexemes are “units of lexical meaning which exist regardless
of any inflectional endings they may have or the number of words they may contain”

The term was first introduced by O.Pieshkovsky in 1918 Pieshkovsky, however,

defined ‘lexeme’ as a group of associated words, a meaning that is now obsolete.

According to yet another approach, one taken by Uriel Weinreich, lexemes are held
to be any units of the lexicon, including set expressions and idioms

In keeping with Crystal’s definition, a lexeme corresponds to an entire set of forms

that a word can take. In the present book, we treat a lexeme as a unit of the lexicon –
single words or groups of words – whose meaning is held to underlie a series of
related forms, for example, sing, sang,sung, singing, which are assumed to have the
same meaning, “sing”. By the same token, the penny drops, the penny dropped, the
penny is dropping, etc. are all different forms of the same lexeme.

Within a lexeme, it is common to differentiate between the headword and other –

derived – forms. Some words, however, like prepositions and adverbs, have no
grammatical variants and are constituted by a single form (at, down, twice). Most
words, on the other hand – nouns, verbs, adjectives – have several forms apart from
the headword (in the lexeme go, for example, go is the base form, while goes,
went, gone and going are all inflected forms; the noun brother has forms
brothers, brother’s, brothers’) and all of them jointly constitute a lexeme. As is
apparent, a lexeme may be made up of one word – girl, move, fast, five, up – but
it may also consist of more than one word, e.g. damage control, up close, beef up,
bear down on, comfort zone, mission creep, grease sb’s palm, cut to the chase,
etc.

Since such lexemes consist of more than one element, we will refer to them,
following Weinreich, Jackson, Zé Amvela and others, as multiword lexemes. As
examples given above suggest, multiword lexemes are what can be described as a
‘motley crowd’: they are represented by a mixed bag of compounds, multiword
verbs, collocations and idioms.

Classifications of idiomatic expressions.

а. A hallmark of idioms, according to the traditional view, is their semantic non-

compositionality. The meaning in idioms is a result of the mutual interaction of
constituent elements and expresses a single concept. By way of illustration, deliver
the goods with the meanings of individual components weakened or lost, conveys a
single idea: “to honor one’s pledge; to keep a promise”. Every word in a free word
combination can form additional syntactic ties with other words outside the
expression, retaining its individual meaning as it does so. This kind of semantic unity
makes idioms similar to words. Buy the farm, a slang idiomatic expression whose
meaning is understood in its entirety and is not related to the meanings of the
individual words, can be replaced in some contexts by the single-word verb die. In
the same fashion, the phrasal lexeme up for grabs can be reinterpreted through the
adjective available.

б. Metaphoricity of idioms, which is regarded as their most essential feature. The

non-literal character of idioms accounts for their semantic opacity, or in other words,
a lack of transparency. Metaphoricity suggests that the actual meaning of idioms is
figurative(we also use the term “transferred”) and it stands in opposition to the
literal meaning of a free word combination. The transference can be based on
metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche.

c. b. By the conventionalization of idioms we mean that over time many literal

expressions have been re-used so many times in specific language situations that they
have become conventionalized, idiomatic, and fixed in their meaning.
Conventionalization is the end result of what
initially was a free word combination.

d. Many, if not most, idioms have the potential for ambiguity. Since most idioms are
constructed from elements that are also used non-idiomatically, they may have either
a literal or idiomatic interpretation. Someone blows the whistle, it may well be the
case that they produce a high whistling sound with the help of a small object that is
expressly used for that purpose.
Context is essential for the interpretation of literal language, as even literal
expressions can lead to misinformation and confusion on the part of the listener or
reader if they are outside their natural context. Taken out of context, it can have the
literal meaning of a “tape which is red”. Considering it in an article from The
Independent, however, which reads: EU announces a ‘bonfire of the red tape’, it takes
little effort to conclude that it should be interpreted as “(unnecessary) bureaucratic
rules and paperwork”. The context in which the idiom occurs, therefore, plays a
crucial role in the elimination of a potential ambiguity.

e. An important, if not obligatory, characteristic of idiomatic expressions is the

presence of a cultural component in their semantic structure. This component plays
a special role in the emergence of an idiomatic unit and the formation of its semantic
structure. Idioms are firmly embedded in cultural tradition, which marks them as
bearers of cultural information, based on a unique experience of the nation.
Many of the idioms are closely associated with the historical and cultural
context from which they originate. For example, the idiom mind one’s p’s and
q’s originates from the early pub days, when beer and ale were served in pint
and quart containers. The tab was kept on a chalkboard used to count the pints
and quarts that the customer consumed. So minding your p’s and q’s means
watching your alcoholic intake and, consequently, controlling your behavior.

f. Idioms may enter into the same kinds of semantic relations as individual words. It
has been shown that words may stand in certain sense relations: homonymy,
synonymy, polysemy and antonymy. For example, idioms pie in the sky, pipe
dream, and castle in the air may be viewed as synonymous and referring generally
to unrealistic hopes and/or wishful thinking.
Restricted collocations a saving grace and a redeeming featuren (meaning “a
property or characteristic which (partly) makes up for one’s other faults or
shortcomings”) or idiomatic expressions cheap as dirt, a dime a dozen, two for a
penny are another two examples of synonymic relations.

Besides, many idioms, just like individual words, may have more than one meaning.
An example of a polysemous idiom is the expression on the spot, as it can mean
(1) here and now; immediately, as in They say they’ll shoot him on the spot if
they see him; (2) in the place where something is happening: We ought to find
out the views of the people on the spot; (3) in an embarrassing or difficult
situation, under pressure: The state secretary believes the time has come to put
the dictator on the spot.

Polysemy, just like synonymy, is particularly evident across registers and styles. In
the sentence This phone may keep you up at night, since it is lit up like a
Christmas tree, the underlined idiom means ‘very bright’. In slang vocabulary,
however, this same idiom is often used in the sense ‘very drunk’, as in the
sentence: He stumbled in at two in the morning lit up like a Christmas tree.

As regards a relation of antonymy, expressions by accident and by design / on

purpose (E.g. You might cut yourself by accident; you wouldn’t cut yourself on
purpose; Nobody will ever know whether this happened by accident or by
design) may serve as good examples.

The more recent, i.e. cognitive studies of idiomatic expressions, take the view that
there is clearly motivation behind the occurrence of particular words that participate
in a large number of idioms.

Phrasal verbs and their types.

By “multiword verbs” most people tend to understand what has come to be known as
phrasal verbs. This, however, is only partly justified. Indeed, in multiword verbs, the
verb and one or two other constituents can be analyzed together, as a single unit. On
the other hand, the group of multiword verbs comprises not one, but rather several
types of verb structures. The criteria used to demarcate these three types are:
transitivity (a property of verbs that determines whether they can take direct objects:
stand vs. throw→ a ball) and the position of the direct object, on the one hand, and
the number of particles that the main verb can take, on the other.

• Prepositional verbs are all transitive, and as such, are always followed by an object:
cater for/to (all tastes), account for (differences), bear on (the national policies)
etc. What sets this group of multiword verbs apart from phrasal verbs, for example, is
that the object never goes between the verb and the particle: cater all tastes for/to(?)
would be ungrammatical.
• Phrasal verbs can be both transitive (drop the kids off and pick them up from
school) and intransitive (bear up: I wonder how he is bearing up after what has
happened; go down: How did your speech go down?).
Transitive phrasal verbs, as opposed to the previous group – prepositional verbs – are
characterized by the fact that the object may take two alternative positions: either
following the particle (There’s little that bears out this idea) – or going in between
the verb and the particle (to bear it out). It must be borne in mind that the object
expressed by a personal pronoun is constrained with regard to its position as it can
only occupy the middle spot between the verb and the particle: bring her up, pull it
off, put you out, but not bring up her.

• Phrasal-prepositional verbs occupy a middle ground between the two previous

subgroups. Their most distinctive feature is that they have two particles (get away
with murder, catch up on the news, fall down on one’s job, be in on the plan).
Besides, like prepositional and some phrasal verbs, phrasal-prepositional verbs are
transitive.

ВЗЯТО З НЕТУ

definition example
verb

single-word verb look direct your You

eyes in a must look before
certain you leap.
direction

phrasal verb + look up search for You can look

verb adverb and find up the word in a
information in dictionary.
a reference
book

verb + look after take care of Who is looking

preposition after the baby?
 verb + look forward t anticipate I look forward
adverb + o with pleasure to meeting you.
preposition

Idioms. Motivation of idioms.

It has long been recognized that expressions such as down for the count, bring
home the bacon, think outside the box, pay lip service, red tape etc. are not only
structurally irregular but also semantically peculiar. They are conventionally
referred to as idioms. According to a traditional definition of an idiom, the latter is an
expression whose overall meaning cannot be inferred from the meanings of the
components that make it up. Here are just a few of some other definitions that have
been proposed:

“... groups of words with set meanings that cannot be calculated

by adding up the separate meanings of the parts”

“... multi-word unit(s) which (have) to be learned as a whole,

along with associated sociolinguistic, cultural and pragmatic rules of
use”
“... having meaning not deducible from those of the separate
words”

“a form of expression, construction or phrase peculiar to a

language and often possessing a meaning other than its grammatical
or logical one”

Definition of an idiom will contain three elements:

(a) idioms consist of more than one word;
(b)idioms are fixed collocations (i.e. word combinations);
(c) idioms are semantically opaque

Weinreich defines idiomaticity as “aphenomenon which may be described as the

use of segmentally complex expressions whose semantic structure is not
deducible jointly from their syntactic structure and the semantic structure of
their components”

Some scholars argue that idioms and idiomaticity are not identical despite their close
relation. All idioms naturally indicate idiomaticity but not all word combinations
that show idiomaticity are idioms. Thus, such word combinations as a vivid
example, richly deserve or telltale signs clearly indicate idiomaticity (esp. the last one
of the three), but are not idioms, since they are quite unrestricted in their variants. By
contrast, the components of idioms cannot be changed or, even if they can, this can
happen only within certain limits. As we have made clear, in many cases it is hardly
possible to predict the meanings of the idioms on the basis of the meanings of their
constituents. For example, when we say He had to deal with a lot of red tape in
that country, we do not mean that he literally encountered a lot of long red-
colored pieces of plastic or cloth. What we in fact mean by this sentence is that he
had to grapple with unnecessarily complicated bureaucratic procedures.

Some other examples of idioms are put one’s best foot forward, be/talk at cross
purposes, at the back of beyond, not to have a leg to stand on, pull no punches,
jump on the bandwagon, hit the nail on the head, come up short, a shot in the
arm, swallow
something hook, line and sinker, come out of the closet, etc.

It is easy to see how this image gave rise to another meaning, i.e believing or
accepting a lie completely, through a metaphorical reinterpretation as in: He told her
a rather suspicious story of having been invited by her father, and she seemed to
swallow it hook, line and sinker. When a metaphor-based idiom comes into use, its
metaphoric image is novel and obvious, and is initially perceived as such. But very
soon, when such idioms are established as fixed lexical items, the metaphors in them
tend to lose their vivid character and, as a result, speakers lose sight of the idiom’s
origin and no longer appreciate the metaphor behind it.
the metaphorical background of the oft-cited kick the bucket is not readily apparent to
most English speakers and is even disputed by some scholars.

Idiom is motivated by fragments of world knowledge about the frame bullfight. The
meaningful elements that are significant for the lexicalized meaning are slots of this
frame: torero, bull, instruments used by the torero, although not all of them are
explicitly expressed in the lexical structure of the idiom.

Explanation of idioms from a cognitive perspective.

Contrary to much of early research on idioms, George Lakoff and other cognitive
linguists have demonstrated that the meanings of idioms are not arbitrary, but in
fact motivated. To see the difference between the traditional view and cognitive, let
us consider the following examples that involve idioms revolving around one
concept, FIRE: She was doing a slow burn. Your son will hit the ceiling when he
hears that: he has a short fuse. When opposed, contradicted or challenged, he
could breathe fire. Relations between them have almost reached boiling point.
After the row, she was spitting fire. They really need to let off steam. He blew a
fuse when he saw a dent in his car. Jim was really hot under the collar when he
found out.
He is angry as it is: why are you fanning the flames? Boy, am I burned up!
It is obvious from this set of examples that anger (angry state, furious condition etc.)
is conceptualized as fire, i.e. understood in terms of fire. Here we have idioms that
are related to various aspects of the phenomenon of fire and deal with (high)
temperature (hot under the collar), what fire results in (boiling point), the danger it
presents (spit fire, breathe fire) etc. As the examples suggest, in addition to the word
fire itself, several other words are used from the domain of fire, such as burn, hot, fan
the flames etc. These and many other examples suggest that it is the concept and the
conceptual domain of fire – and not the individual words themselves – that take part
in generating ideas that stand behind idiomatic expressions. The individual words
only reveal this deeper process of conceptualization