Heidi Harley: Idioms

[Martha McGinnis]

Dear DMers --

  I heard Jim Higgenbotham talk on the English progressive last Friday, and
he touched on the well-known phenomenon in which Vendler's 'achievement'
classes get a pre-event focus in the progressive: 'she's winning the
race', 'he was dying for three weeks before the end,' 'she's reaching the
top'.  I niggled at him with respect to the true punctuality of 'croak' as
opposed to the potential for long-drawn-outness of 'die' (*He was croaking
for 3 weeks before the end). (I was trying to suggest that 'die' was
really an accomplishment, so he didn't need to treat the whole batch of
examples he had with 'die' significantly differently than his
accomplishment examples, and that true acheivements, like 'croak', didn't
have this progressive problem. Or something like that).
     (Here's why I'm aware of this fact, and where it's been relevant to my
life as DMer: The distinction between the apparent non-punctuality of
'die' vs. the punctuality of 'kill' has been raised as an argument against
decomposing 'kill' as 'cause to die' -- it's either not decomposable (if
you're a lexicalist) or (if you're a DMer) it decomposes into something
more like 'cause to croak' -- not that the specific identity of the root
is important, necessarily, but it's clear, anyway, that we wouldn't expect
a non-punctual root inside a punctual agentive transitive. Or
something. Hmm -- now that I think of it, maybe that's _not_ the point,
and I've been misunderstanding the argument all along -- you can certainly
get a pre-event progressive reading of 'kill': 'Smoke from the factory
next door is killing me.' Help!)
     Anyway, Jim said, that's not  an argument against the existence of the
acheivement class; what it is, he said, is an indication that 'idioms' (of
the acheivement class) have the special property of not allowing the
pre-event reading in the progressive. Non-idiomatic acheivements allow it,
said he, idiomatic ones don't; cf. *he was croaking/kicking the bucket for
3 weeks before the end.
     So, I tried
     a) to think of a 'non-idiomatic' achievement verb that doesn't allow
the pre-event reading with -ing (i.e. it's like 'win' or 'die' in that
it's not an obvious idiom,  but like 'croak' in that doesn't allow a
progressive).
     b) to think of an 'idiomatic' acheivement verb or VP that DOES allow
the pre-event focus with -ing (i.e. it's like 'croak' in being an 'idiom'
but like 'win' or 'die' in allowing a progressive)

Maddeningly, none sprang to mind in either category. There were some
interesting things that showed up when I started running down a mental
list of varying interpretations of 'take', when the meaning is apparently
achievement-y:
     'take a picture' allows a pre-event progressive  he's taking a picture
     'take the cake' doesn't: *he's taking the cake
     'take a minute' doesn't (maybe? compare 'a while"): the analysis of
the sample is taking ??a minute/??an hour/a while.
     'take a beating' does: the Ravens are taking a beating (mid-event)
     'take a powder' doesn't (I think?): *the jailbird is taking a powder
     'take into account' does: 'he's taking it into account' (mid-event)
     'take his temperature': 'he's taking his temperature' (mid-event)
     'take off': The plane's taking off (pre-event?)
     'take a left': he's taking a left (mid-event)
     'take a break': he's taking a break  (mid-event)
     'take stock' : he's taking stock (mid-event)

Anyway, that's just to give you a flavor for the kind of thing I'm
woq  ndering about. If there really *is* a difference between achievements
and accomplishments, then presumably the examples that allow -ing are
accomplishment idioms, and the 'ing' isn't pre-event, but mid-event (that
seems true for the examples with 'take' above, except for 'take a
picture'). The question is, is there really a distinciton between idioms
and non-idioms in this regard? If so, that means that 'take a picture' is
*not* idiomatic, and we've got some kind of test for idiomhood that
distinguishes idioms from non-idioms, which would be REALLY WEIRD, given
DM's general assumptions. (Especially for monomorphemic ones like 'croak'
vs 'die'.

Thoughts pls?

:) hh


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Heidi Harley					(520) 626-3554
Department of Linguistics			hharley at u.arizona.edu
Douglass 200E					Fax: (520) 626-9014
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721