Unit 04 Idiomatic Aspect of English Word Combinations

What is a chunk? --- Psycholinguistically, a chunk is a unit of memory organization, formed by bringing together a set of already formed chunks in memory and welding them together into a larger unit. So, focusing on lexical chunks is a useful way to look at language and to extend learners‟ control of it.

4.3 Idioms in English
What is an idiom? An idiom is a multi-word
expression which functions as a single unit and whose meaning cannot be worked out from the sum of its separate parts. That is, it has a holistic meaning which cannot be retrieved from the individual meanings of the component words.
For example: (1) She washed her hands of the matter (She refused to have anything more to do with the matter). (2) He spilled the beans (He told someone something that people have been trying to keep secret). (3) He seems like a decent bloke and I‟ve got no axe to grind with him (I don‟t get along with him).
4.2 Collocations in English
What
Collocation
is the way in which words are used together regularly. It refers to the restrictions on how words can be used together, i.e. which prepositions are used with particular verbs, or which verbs and nouns are used together.
is Collocation？
They are the words that tend to co-occur in a language — in grammatical patterns, compounds or fixed phrases. For example, in English the verb “perform” is used with “operation”, but not with “discussion”. Thus we can say: The doctor performed the operation while the committee was holding a discussion.

4.1 Chunks in English
What is a chunk? --- In linguistics, a chunk is a unit of language that forms a syntactic or semantic unit but also has internal structure. Specifically, it refers to a unit of language longer than a word but shorter than a sentence and which plays a role in comprehension and production.

What is a chunk? Lexical chunks (Lewis, 1993), also called formulaic speech (Wang-Fillmore, 1976), are groups of words that are commonly found together. Lexical chunks can include collocations but they are usually more content-dominated than grammar-based. In the following dialogue there are six possible chunks: A: Did you stay long at the party? （1） (2) B: No, I got out of there as soon as they ran out of food. As far as I was concerned, I left early.”


Where can we find correct collocations in EFL lear accesses are dictionaries and corpus-based computer programs. One such good example is the Collins COBUILD program, containing some 10,000 keywords, 140,000 collocate pairs; and approximately 2.6 million different examples drawn from the Bank of English (BNC) -- a corpus of 200 million words from a variety of written and spoken sources. We may find that the keyword “challenge” mostly collocates with the verb “face” (frequency: 221).
• For instance, do sb. well means "provide food, comforts, etc. for", as in "They do you very well in the hotel" • do sb. brown: to cheat sb, to play trick on(使某人上当)

Collocation is often regarded as one of the binding forces in language, organizing lexis according to which words typically occur and showing networks of word association. Learners experience difficulty because collocation is often language-specific (e.g. „blue blood‟) and not determined by universal semantic constrains (e.g. „green grass‟).

Characteristics of idioms 1) Semantic unity Each idiom is a semantic unity. The semantic unity can be reflected by the fact that the meaning of an idiom is very often not the total sum of the meanings of the constituent words. The semantic unity can aslo be shown in the illogical relations between the literal meanings of the consitituent words and the meaning of the idiom.
Unit 4
Idiomatic Aspect of English Word Combinations
Pre-Class Reading
4.1 Chunks in English 4.2 Collocations in English 4.3 Idioms in English 4.4 Proverbs in English

But when the metaphor is heavily culturebounded, it may beyond the people outside the specific culture of the idiom to comprehend it. Those who have no idea of Christian culture will have problems interpreting the idioms derived from the Bible, such as a good Samaritan, play Judas, and the promised land. Idioms are therefore not considered just a part of the language, but also a part of the culture.
What are the features of idioms? ---typically metaphorical in historical or etymological terms. The metaphor may be relatively straightforward to decode, as in a snake in the grass or bite off more than one can chew, or obscure, as in kick the bucket and rain cats and dogs. When the metaphor is based on universal knowledge, the idiom is easily deduced and translated, such as a tooth for a tooth and a wolf in sheep’s clothing,.