<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN">
<html><head><style type="text/css"><!--
blockquote, dl, ul, ol, li { padding-top: 0 ; padding-bottom: 0 }
--></style><title>Re: [Lexicog] an English
idiom</title></head><body>
<div>As for someone whose office is directly across the hall from
George Lakoff's, I'll say this is not just a figure of speech, but a
metaphor in the usual literary (pre-Lakovian) sense.</div>
<div><x-tab> </x-tab>Of
course, George would have an analysis for it with 'swallowed up in
sorrow' being doubly metaphoric, mapping large expanses onto faceless
faces having virtual mouths, and then mapping sorrow onto a large
expanse. But even though something along this line is the right
analyses, it misses the point, as Lakovian analysis regularly does,
that there are metaphors like this one are very conscious (in contrast
to the MORE is UP kind). And that "loosens" the reins of
metaphor, to speak metaphorically. So it makes some sense to observe
that there is often a kind of agency associated with metaphorical
'swallow (up)'</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><x-tab> </x-tab>'the
ship was swallowed up<b> by</b> the sea'</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>but not so much when the expanse is more locational</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><x-tab> </x-tab>'the
ship was swallowed up<b> in</b> the sea'</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>The point is that these are quite close. The agency can be quite
bleached. (160,000 hits googling 'swallowed up by', 143,000 hits
googling 'swallowed up in'), including the interesting pair at:
http://www.rense.com/general43/she.htm. The title is "Swallowed
up by emptiness", but the line in the text is '<font
color="#000000">She is<b> swallowed up in</b> emptiness</font>,
....'</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>And there are plenty of straight transitives, like 'the earth
opened and swallowed them up', where the agency on the part of the
expanse can't really be bleached.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>The expanse can also be something expanding.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><x-tab> </x-tab><font
size="-4" color="#000000">those formerly suburban areas that have
been<b> swallowed up by</b> urban sprawl</font></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>There is also a sense with 'in' (but apparently not with 'by') in
which the identity of the entity is not lost, like</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><x-tab> </x-tab>'they
were swallowed up in the crowd'</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>which means only that they were lost from view.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>While my gut reaction is that in spite of all this semantic
subtlety, Wayne's expression shouldn't appear in a dictionary. But
then I hesitate and ask myself, where does this kind of information go
in a thorough description of a language. Should there be an extended
entry for 'swallow' that captures all of this? The trick is that
'sorrow' is not a metaphorical expanse except when predicated of
'swallow'. This leads to the question of how to manage such
collocational facts.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>I don't know if these ramblings suggest anything to anyone out
there. But the question of what makes for a true idiom as opposed to
what makes a metaphor worth entering in the lexicon is worth
discussing.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Rich Rhodes</div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Well said, John.<br>
<br>
I think that most of those who focus on the non-compositionality of
idioms also, even if only tacitly, also include conventionality
(establishedness through usage) as a criterion. If a phrase is
non-compositional but novel, they talk of figures of speech instead of
idiomaticity. If a phrase is conventional but not saliently
non-compositional, it may be called an idiom, but is more likely to be
termed a cliché or something of that sort.<br>
<br>
For me "my soul is swallowed up in sorrow" is a perfectly
understandable figure of speech, but not conventional, even though the
extension of "swallow up" to mean something like
"overwhelm" is reasonably conventional. (Not enough to make
it in as a sense in the Webster online entry for "swallow",
though, I notice.) If you allow "swallow up" to mean
overwhelm, the phrase is compositional, but if you take "swallow
(up)" only in its prototypical physical sense, the phrase is
non-compositional.<br>
<br>
--David Tuggy<br>
<br>
John Roberts wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><tt>With Wayne's query: "Is "My
soul is swallowed up in sorrow." an idiom in<br>
(Modern) English?" aren't we struggling with what we understand
an idiom to<br>
be?<br>
<br>
Most definitions of what an idiom is focus on the decompositional
nature of<br>
idioms. For example, these are some definitions I pulled off the
net:<br>
<br>
% an expression whose meanings cannot be inferred from the meanings of
the<br>
words that make it up<br>
% An idiom is an expression whose meaning is not compositional - that
is,<br>
whose meaning does not follow from the meaning of the individual words
of</tt></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><tt>which it is composed.<br>
% An expression whose meaning is not predictable from the usual
meanings of<br>
its constituent elements, as kick the bucket, hang one's head, etc.,
or from<br>
the general grammatical tules of a language, as the table round for
the<br>
round table, and which is not a constituent of a larger expression of
like<br>
characteristics.<br>
% a sequence of words which functions semantically as a unit and with
an<br>
unpredictable meaning (eg kick the bucket, meaning die). This is
generally<br>
accompanied by a degree of syntactic restriction.<br>
% an expression that does not mean what it literally says (eg,
You're<br>
driving me up a wall.)<br>
% An idiom is a phrase or expression whose meaning cannot be
understood from<br>
the ordinary meanings of the words.<br>
% a sequence of words which forms a whole unit of meaning<br>
% an expression that does not mean what it literally says<br>
% is a group of words that, taken as a whole, has a meaning different
from<br>
that of the sum of the individual words<br>
--- and so on<br>
<br>
Under any of these definitions "My soul is swallowed up in
sorrow." is an<br>
English idiom.<br>
<br>
But some of the definitions pick out another understanding of what an
idiom<br>
is - and that is a common expression well known to the speakers of
the<br>
language. E.g.<br>
<br>
% A common expression that has acquired a meaning that differs from
its<br>
literal meaning, such as "It's raining cats and dogs" or
"That cost me an<br>
arm and a leg."<br>
% an expression in the usage of a language that has a meaning that
cannot be<br>
derived from the conjoined meanings of its elements (eg, raining cats
and<br>
dogs)<br>
<br>
On this basis "My soul is swallowed up in sorrow." is not an
English idiom.<br>
<br>
A while ago we had someone on this list asking if he could make up
English<br>
words. He was told he could but whether they would catch on and
actually<br>
'become' English words was another matter. Isn't it the same with this
idiom<br>
of Wayne's. Someone has made it up and it qualifies as an idiom in
a<br>
technical sense but it has never caught on because most English
speakers<br>
have never heard of it.<br>
<br>
John Roberts<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
</tt></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>
<hr width="500"></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><tt><b>Yahoo! Groups Links</b></tt><br>
<tt></tt></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>
<ul>
<li><tt>To visit your group on the web, go to:<br>
</tt><a
href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lexicographylist/"><tt
>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lexicographylist/</tt></a><tt><br>
<li>To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:<br>
</tt><a
href=
"mailto:lexicographylist-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com?subject=Unsubscribe"
><tt>lexicographylist-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com</tt></a><tt><br>
<li>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the</tt> <a
href="http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/"><tt>Yahoo! Terms of
Service</tt></a><tt>.</tt></ul>
</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<x-sigsep><pre>--
</pre></x-sigsep>
<div
>******************************************************************<br
>
<br>
Richard A. Rhodes<br>
Department of Linguistics<br>
University of California<br>
Berkeley, CA 94720-2650<br>
Voice (510) 643-7325<br>
FAX (510) 643-5688<br>
<br>
******************************************************************</div
>
<!-- |**|begin egp html banner|**| -->
<br>
<tt><hr width="500">
<b>Yahoo! Groups Links</b><br>
<ul>
<li>To visit your group on the web, go to:<br><a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lexicographylist/">http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lexicographylist/</a><br>
<li>To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:<br><a href="mailto:lexicographylist-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com?subject=Unsubscribe">lexicographylist-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com</a><br>
<li>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the <a href="http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/">Yahoo! Terms of Service</a>.
</ul>
</tt>
</br>
<!-- |**|end egp html banner|**| -->
</body>
</html>