9. Foot and Mouth: The phrasal patterns of two frequent nouns
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Hans Lindquist
Abstract
In this paper concepts fromcognitive linguistics are combinedwith methods from corpus linguistics to study the phraseology formed around the frequent body part nouns foot and mouth. The material consists of The British National Corpus accessed through Fletcher’s (2003/2004) database Phrases in English supplemented with British, American and Australian newspapers on CD-ROM. In more than half of the occurrences in the BNC the single word forms foot, feet, mouth and mouths were used in phrases, where furthermore their meaning had often been extended metonymically or metaphorically. The frequent lemmas foot and mouth are thus frequent at least partly because they occur in conventionalized phrases. Body parts are frequently mapped onto topographical phenomena in phrases like the foot of the mountain and the mouth of the river. Apart from being used in such phrases mouth is often connected to conventional ways of describing eating, drinking, speaking and the experience and expression of emotions. Foot more often refers to location, and also occurs in phrases expressing other meanings, such as measurement. Metonymy and metaphor play a major role in the creation and extension of new phrasal patterns. Metonymic links are frequent because a physical reaction connected to the body part is used to represent the underlying emotion. In many cases these physical reactions have become such a conventionalized way of expressing the emotion that the reaction alone can stand for the emotion. The relative transparency of some phrases such as down in the mouth, stamping one’s foot and foaming at the mouth is likely to facilitate their learning in spite of the fact that they are not very frequent in themselves. Phrases are often manipulated in various ways, so that they occur in non-canonical forms and in word play. The use of word play shows that the borderline between literal and nonliteral meanings is fuzzy, and that both a literal and a nonliteral meaning can be available to speakers simultaneously, although at any given moment one is usually more salient than the other.
Abstract
In this paper concepts fromcognitive linguistics are combinedwith methods from corpus linguistics to study the phraseology formed around the frequent body part nouns foot and mouth. The material consists of The British National Corpus accessed through Fletcher’s (2003/2004) database Phrases in English supplemented with British, American and Australian newspapers on CD-ROM. In more than half of the occurrences in the BNC the single word forms foot, feet, mouth and mouths were used in phrases, where furthermore their meaning had often been extended metonymically or metaphorically. The frequent lemmas foot and mouth are thus frequent at least partly because they occur in conventionalized phrases. Body parts are frequently mapped onto topographical phenomena in phrases like the foot of the mountain and the mouth of the river. Apart from being used in such phrases mouth is often connected to conventional ways of describing eating, drinking, speaking and the experience and expression of emotions. Foot more often refers to location, and also occurs in phrases expressing other meanings, such as measurement. Metonymy and metaphor play a major role in the creation and extension of new phrasal patterns. Metonymic links are frequent because a physical reaction connected to the body part is used to represent the underlying emotion. In many cases these physical reactions have become such a conventionalized way of expressing the emotion that the reaction alone can stand for the emotion. The relative transparency of some phrases such as down in the mouth, stamping one’s foot and foaming at the mouth is likely to facilitate their learning in spite of the fact that they are not very frequent in themselves. Phrases are often manipulated in various ways, so that they occur in non-canonical forms and in word play. The use of word play shows that the borderline between literal and nonliteral meanings is fuzzy, and that both a literal and a nonliteral meaning can be available to speakers simultaneously, although at any given moment one is usually more salient than the other.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors xi
- Acknowledgements xiii
- Preface xv
- Introduction: The many faces of phraseology xix
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Part I. Phraseology: theory, typology and terminology
- 1. Phraseology and linguistic theory: A brief survey 3
- 2. Disentangling the phraseological web 27
- 3. A unified approach to semantic frames and collocational patterns 51
- 4. Processing of idioms and idiom modifications: A view from cognitive linguistics 67
- 5. A very complex criterion of fixedness: Non-compositionality 81
- 6. Reassessing the canon: 'Fixed' phrases in general reference corpora 95
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Part II. Corpus-based analyses of phraseological units
- 7. Adjective + Noun sequences in attributive or NP-final positions: Observations on lexicalization 111
- 8. Phrasal similes in the BNC 127
- 9. Foot and Mouth: The phrasal patterns of two frequent nouns 143
- 10. The Good Lord and his works: A corpus-driven study of collocational resonance 159
- 11. Fixed expressions, extenders and metonymy in the speech of people with Alzheimer's disease 175
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Part III. Phraseology across languages and cultures
- 12. Cross-linguistic phraseological studies: An overview 191
- 13. Figurative phraseology and culture 207
- 14. Critical observations on the culture-boundness of phraseology 229
- 15. Phraseology in a European framework: A cross-linguistic and cross-cultural research project on widespread idioms 243
- 16. Free and bound prepositions in a contrastive perspective. The case of with and avec 259
- 17. Contrastive idiom analysis: The case of Japanese and English idioms of anger 275
- 18. Automatic extraction of translation equivalents of phrasal and light verbs in English and Russian 293
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Part IV. Phraseology in lexicography and natural language processing
- 19. Dictionaries and collocation 313
- 20. Computational phraseology: An overview 337
- 21. A computational lexicography approach to phraseologisms 361
- 22. Extracting specialized collocations using lexical functions 377
- 23. Combined statistical and grammatical criteria for the retrieval of phraseological units in an electronic corpus 391
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Envoi
- The phrase, the whole phrase and nothing but the phrase 407
- Author index 411
- Subject index 417
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors xi
- Acknowledgements xiii
- Preface xv
- Introduction: The many faces of phraseology xix
-
Part I. Phraseology: theory, typology and terminology
- 1. Phraseology and linguistic theory: A brief survey 3
- 2. Disentangling the phraseological web 27
- 3. A unified approach to semantic frames and collocational patterns 51
- 4. Processing of idioms and idiom modifications: A view from cognitive linguistics 67
- 5. A very complex criterion of fixedness: Non-compositionality 81
- 6. Reassessing the canon: 'Fixed' phrases in general reference corpora 95
-
Part II. Corpus-based analyses of phraseological units
- 7. Adjective + Noun sequences in attributive or NP-final positions: Observations on lexicalization 111
- 8. Phrasal similes in the BNC 127
- 9. Foot and Mouth: The phrasal patterns of two frequent nouns 143
- 10. The Good Lord and his works: A corpus-driven study of collocational resonance 159
- 11. Fixed expressions, extenders and metonymy in the speech of people with Alzheimer's disease 175
-
Part III. Phraseology across languages and cultures
- 12. Cross-linguistic phraseological studies: An overview 191
- 13. Figurative phraseology and culture 207
- 14. Critical observations on the culture-boundness of phraseology 229
- 15. Phraseology in a European framework: A cross-linguistic and cross-cultural research project on widespread idioms 243
- 16. Free and bound prepositions in a contrastive perspective. The case of with and avec 259
- 17. Contrastive idiom analysis: The case of Japanese and English idioms of anger 275
- 18. Automatic extraction of translation equivalents of phrasal and light verbs in English and Russian 293
-
Part IV. Phraseology in lexicography and natural language processing
- 19. Dictionaries and collocation 313
- 20. Computational phraseology: An overview 337
- 21. A computational lexicography approach to phraseologisms 361
- 22. Extracting specialized collocations using lexical functions 377
- 23. Combined statistical and grammatical criteria for the retrieval of phraseological units in an electronic corpus 391
-
Envoi
- The phrase, the whole phrase and nothing but the phrase 407
- Author index 411
- Subject index 417
