Idioms crosslinguistically universal?

Matthew Dryer dryer at buffalo.edu
Fri Nov 18 12:18:50 UTC 2011


The two languages I have worked on the most differ dramatically in how 
much they use idioms.  Walman, a Papuan language, has many idioms.  
Kutenai, an American Indian languages, has few if any.  The difference 
seems to be related to the fact that Kutenai is polysynthetic.  Kutenai 
essentially has the morphological equivalent of idioms, in combining 
roots within stems in ways that are the analogue of idioms.  I know of 
at least one other polysynthetic language which is similar.

Matthew Dryer

On 11/17/11 6:49 PM, jess tauber wrote:
> I've been in discussions with a linguist studying idioms in English and we started wondering whether all languages have idioms. I've already found online mention of projects comparing idioms in Eurasian areal perspective. But have enough studies been done on languages elsewhere to be able to claim universality as a form-class? In Yahgan, for ex.,idioms seem to have a very restricted distribution (generally certain noun-adjective compounds). Has anyone looked at this from a typological POV? I'd be posting this to LINGTYP but I usually get very few responses there. Thanks.
>
> Jess Tauber
>
>



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