Beatrice Warren

The idiom principle and the open choice principle

The assumptions forming the basis of this study are that the language user has available a number of more-or-less preconstructed phrases and that the production of texts involves alternation between word-for-word combinations—which we refer to as adherence to the open choice principle (after Sinclair 1991)—and preconstructed multi-word combinations, which we refer to as making use of the idiom principle (again after Sinclair). The main aim of the study is to gain an Impression ofthe impact that this alternation has on the structure of texts. Therefore a mode of analysis has been worked out revealing how multi-word combinations combine with each other and with words combined according to the open choice principle. This is the main contribution of the study. Another important contribution is the revelation that there is a large amount of prefabricated language in bot h spoken and written texts (on average around half of the texts), which makes it impossible to consider idioms and other multi-word combinations as marginal phenomena.

Prolegomena to a study of evaluative words

Utterances do not exist without speakers. Naturally, therefore, speakers leave traces in the structure of language. The speaker’s perspective, the speaker’s attitude, the speaker’s epistemological stance in particular have shaped and continue to shape grammatical, pragmatic and semantic elements, which has been demonstrated in a number of fairly recent studies dealing with the speaker’s involvement in utterances. Linguists are now aware of the speaker’s impact in forming deictic, modal and pragmatic expressions and in forming grammatical words and syntactic structures. The part that evaluation plays in the structure of lexical items has, however, received comparatively scanty attention although it is generally acknowledged that there are evaluative and non-evaluative words. Bolinger, for instance, demonstrates clearly the difference between evaluative words, which may be ‘‘favourable’’ or ‘‘unfavourable’’ and non-evaluative words, which are ‘‘neutral’’. Consider some of his examples:

Sense Developments: A Contrastive Study of the Development of Slang Senses and Novel Standard Senses in English

Sense developments : a contrastive study of the development of slang senses and novel standard senses in English