2 Syntactic schemas

Syntactic constructions, as defined by Fillmore, Kay, and O’Connor (Reference Fillmore, Kay and O’Connor1988), are objects of syntactic representation that also contain semantic information. Constructions are lexical, in that they directly relate a form to a semantic content: Goldberg (Reference Goldberg2006) asserts that the essential feature of a construction is to have an overall meaning or function not entirely derivable from internal elements. Bybee (Reference Bybee2006), in an account of constructions more explicitly consistent with a usage-based account, defines constructions as automated sequences or processing units. Constructions are also, however, complex, containing discrete, identifiable internal elements which are themselves lexical units.

Critically, constructions are variable in their degrees of fixedness.

1. (1) kith and kin

2. (2) That’s neither here nor there.

3. (3) pain in the butt

4. (4) I don’t want to play baseball at all, let alone play in the rain.

5. (5) He sneezed the napkin off the table.

At one end of the continuum are highly fixed expressions such as (1) or (2), all elements of which must occur, and which must furthermore occur in a set order, in order for the string to carry its constructional meaning. The slightly less fixed construction seen in example (3) (pain in the X) allows for variations only within a small set of words (neck, butt, and informal synonyms for butt) to fill the final slot. Towards the other end of the continuum one finds constructions such as Fillmore et al.’s (Reference Fillmore, Kay and O’Connor1988) let alone construction, licensing expressions such as the one seen in example (4), and relatively open sentence templates such as that seen in example (5) (from Goldberg, Reference Goldberg1995). The difference between basic sentence patterns and canonical idioms is only the degree of idiosyncraticity. In every case − from the most fixed expressions, to general sentence patterns, to the thousand shades of gray that fall between − grammatical patterns are associated directly with semantic content.

Syntactic constructions are grammatical schemas (Barlow & Kemmer, Reference Barlow, Kemmer, Luna, Corrigan and Iverson1994; Bybee & Thompson, Reference Bybee and Thompson1997; Dabrowska, Reference Dabrowska2006; Taylor, Reference Taylor and Tomasello1998). Constructions form as abstractions generalized over multiple instances of utterances, forming prototypically defined categories around clusters of similar tokens of use, with schematic patterns strengthened alongside the frequency of exposure to tokens of use instantiating the schema. The acceptability of incoming forms is assessed based on similarity to entrenched schemas, and stronger schemas are more easily accessed and more productive.

With all syntactic patterns, from the most restricted to the most general, viewed as lexical pairings of form to meaning, the domain of the idiomatic is extended to cover all of a speaker’s syntactic knowledge, as shaped by the speaker’s previous exposure to multiple-word patterns. Canonically idiomatic phrases, however, are clustered far towards the fixed end of the continuum, where the entrenchment of highly restricted patterns and of relatively fixed strings leads to constructions the overall meaning of which is far narrower than (and, in many cases, highly divergent from) the set of possible meanings, based on their constituent elements.

3 Conceptual schemas

Emergent metaphor theory is a usage-based theory of metaphor. Within EMT, metaphors are viewed as schemas that emerge as speakers are exposed to language in use, and conventionalization at the level of both utterances and metaphors is seen as a fundamental feature of metaphorical systems.

Schemas across all levels of linguistic structure form over units that co-occur and units that re-occur; in the application of a schema-based theory of language to metaphor the units which co-occur are domains of thought. Metaphorical schemas form with the re-occurrence of utterances instantiating connections between domains. With repetition, metaphors become more accessible (that is to say, utterances that activate the schemas are more rapidly processed), accessible (speakers are more likely to find utterances aligning with the schemas to be acceptable), and productive (more likely to serve as the basis for new utterances) (Sanford, Reference Sanford2013). The approach is complementary with conceptual metaphor theory (CMT), although it does posit a different direction of causation (with metaphors formed over instances of language in use, rather than sanctioning utterances) than CMT. EMT is highly consistent with approaches such as the career of metaphor hypothesis (Bowdle & Gentner, Reference Bowdle and Gentner2005) and the graded salience hypothesis (Giora, Reference Giora2002) that attribute an important role to language users’ previous experience of metaphor in on-line processing of metaphorical language.

EMT’s treatment of idiosyncratic metaphors (metaphorical utterances, whether phrasal, formulaic, or single-word, the meaning of which is not predictable based on a more general metaphor) are treated in a way that follows from Bybee’s (Reference Bybee1985, Reference Bybee1995) treatment of morphological irregularity as autonomy resulting from the interaction of token-level and type-level frequency. High type frequency entrenches schemas, causing items sanctioned by schemas to be analyzed more as connections between related forms are routinized. High token frequency, on the other hand, entrenches forms. High token frequency can have the effect of giving forms a degree of autonomy from sanctioning schemas, causing them to be analyzed less, as direct access to the form itself is routinized. High token frequency acts to create idiosyncracy and resistance to change as forms become autonomous from schemas; high type frequency effects regularization as schemas come to be applied to new forms.

Within EMT, the semantic idiosyncrasy of recurring metaphorical words and phrases arises as high token frequency licenses autonomy from the source-oriented schema by which meaning is derived from constituent elements, and constructions assume elements of meaning from semantic contexts in which they frequently occur.

4 Synthesis: idiom, syntactic schemas, and metaphorical schemas

The essence of idiom is the tension between metaphorical and syntactic schemas. Within EMT, metaphorical autonomy occurs where some instances or aspects of metaphorical mapping become partially or wholly autonomous from an overall sanctioning metaphorical schema, taking on conventionalized properties that are not predictable based on the overall conceptual schema that forms over the mapping. Where this happens in association with a relatively fixed construction, we find prototypical idioms: utterances with a figurative basis (supplied by a metaphorical schema), a conventionalized meaning (a function of autonomy for some aspect of the mapping from the overall mapping), and a form that bears little lexical or syntactic alteration without its meaning being changed (as a function of the fixedness of the construction underlying the expression).

1. (6) keep it under your hat

2. (7) zip your lips

3. (8) spill the beans

4. (9) let the cat out of the bag

The family of idioms represented in examples (6) through (9) revolves around the idea of revealing or keeping information through verbalization, with information conceived of as a physical entity within a container. A considerable hierarchy of metaphorical schema are here involved: the highly general IDEAS ARE OBJECTS (Lakoff, Espenson, & Schwartz, Reference Lakoff, Espenson and Schwartz1991) is emergent over idioms such as these, as well as a wide host of other utterances at varying levels of entrenchment (such as examples (10) through (13)).

1. (10) I grasped her arguments.

2. (11) This idea is stuck in my head.

3. (12) I gave her the idea.

4. (13) I get it.

Within this more general schema, (6) through (9) all exemplify THE MIND IS A CONTAINER FOR OBJECTS (Lakoff et al., Reference Lakoff, Espenson and Schwartz1991): information is an object in a container (the mind), and verbalizing the information is to have the information escape the container. Over expressions such as (6) and (7) emerges the generalization that KEEPING A SECRET IS PREVENTING AN OBJECT FROM ESCAPING A CONTAINER, over expressions akin to (8) and (9) that REVEALING INFORMATION IS ALLOWING AN OBJECT TO ESCAPE FROM A CONTAINER (both sub-schemas that would be treated, in conceptual metaphor theory, as entailments of IDEAS ARE OBJECTS). Each example individually illustrates a specific mapping which has become partially autonomous, with a conventionalized interpretation not wholly predictable based on either the most general or most narrow of the schema over them.

At the same time, however, examples (6) through (9) exemplify syntactic constructions. Each is a narrow sentence template that bears some, but not much, lexical and syntactic alternation with its meaning intact. (7) admits button in the role of zip, and variations in tense and person are possible for all four, but passivization is questionable in all cases, and lexical substitutions quickly erode the meaning of the expression for all examples. (8) and (9) are prime examples of the transitive X the Y construction, closely associated with idiomaticity.

The strength of a schema, whether semantic or syntactic, is dependent on the sum of a language user’s history of exposure to tokens of use. Activation itself, however, is tied to short-term factors: once activated by an utterance instantiating a given schema, an utterance sanctioned by the same schema will be more rapidly processed (Allbritton, McKoon, & Gerrig, Reference Allbritton, McKoon and Gerrig1995;Bock, Reference Bock1986; Branigan, Pickering, & Cleland, Reference Branigan, Pickering and Cleland2000; Gries, Reference Gries2005; Poplack, Reference Poplack and Labov1980; Scherre & Naro, Reference Scherre and Naro1991). Based on the immediate preceding context of a given idiomatic utterance, a language user might be expected to be ‘biased’ towards an interpretation of idiomatic meaning based either on the utterance’s affinity to tokens instantiating the same syntactic schema, or towards tokens instantiating the same conceptual schema.

Longer-term factors certainly come into play as well: the strong entrenchment of a specific mapping, or of a relatively fixed string of words, relative to an overall schema, leads to some degree of autonomy. Schemas form as connections − essentially routes of activation − are made between tokens on the basis of shared properties. With autonomy, connections between a given mapping/string and other tokens sanctioned by the overall schema weaken, such that the extent to which the schema is activated depends on the degree of autonomy for the string/mapping in question.

Within the framework of EMT, a metaphorical idiom represents both an entrenched conceptual mapping, and an entrenched syntactic string. In both regards, it has some degree of autonomy from its immediate sanctioning schema. For both syntactic and conceptual schemas, autonomy, schema strength, and priming together determine the role of sanctioning schemas in on-line processing. Conceptual schemas enable the distribution of idiomatic meaning out over constituent elements, while syntactic schemas are associated with the reanalysis of idiomatic meaning based on constructional similarity to other idioms.

5 Syntactic schemas and reanalysis

The fact that idioms instantiate not only semantic, but also syntactic, schemas, means that a given metaphorically motivated idiom is connected to a network of semantically similar items, and also to a network of syntactically similar items. Examples (14) and (15), for example, both represent highly entrenched instances of more general schemas, both semantically and syntactically.

1. (14) You’re pulling my leg.

2. (15) You’re yanking my chain.

The two utterances also share a more general schema: again, both semantic (HAVING A JOKE AT SOMEONE’S EXPENSE IS TO PULL SOMETHING OF THEIRS would seem to be as accurate a statement as any of this relatively unproductive schema) and syntactic (where you’re pulling/yanking my leg/chain is prototypical, but a great deal of lexical variation remains possible with meaning intact).^{Footnote 2}

Where a strong (relative to the strength of the specific mapping) metaphorical schema, or priming of the metaphorical schema, causes activation of an overarching conceptual schema, the idiom in question is analyzed on the basis of qualities shared with semantically similar utterances, and the figurative meaning of the idiom is distributed out over internal elements. When, on the other hand, the same factors come into play for a relatively fixed syntactic schema instantiated by an idiom, an idiom is analyzed primarily on the basis of its connection to syntactically similar utterances, and conceptual schemas are eclipsed by syntactic ones, leading in many cases towards a shift in meaning over time.

1. (16) Shit or get off the pot.

2. (17) Fish or cut bait.

The figurative meaning of example (16) is something along the lines of ‘do something, or get out of the way’. (17), on the basis of its constructional similarity to (16), is generally analyzed as meaning the same thing, despite saying something rather different: ‘be helpful in some way’ (i.e., ‘if you’re not going to fish, could you cut bait for those of us who are?’). This is a result of a syntactic schema eclipsing a semantic one, in this case attributable in large part to the weakness of the connection between the utterance and the image schema that motivates (or, it may well be more accurate to say in this case, once motivated) its meaning.^{Footnote 3}

Something similar happens with (18) and (19):

1. (18) Don’t jump the gun.

2. (19) He jumped the shark.

Example (18) dates to the beginning of the twentieth century, a variation on beating the pistol, an expression referring to a false start in athletic events. (19), on the other hand, is far more recent: the first instances in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (Davies, Reference Davies2008) are from 2001. The origin of the phrase lies with the 1950s television series ‘Happy Days’, in the autumn of which ‘The Fonz’ jumps a shark on waterskis. The expression was coined more recently in reference to a ridiculous, last-ditch effort to increase ratings for a series. Not soon afterward, however, instances of jump the shark synonymous with jump the gun begin to emerge, as the semantics of the expression were reanalyzed on the basis of the construction’s similarity to jump the gun. Idiomatic meaning changes, over time, for similar reasons in examples (20) through (22):

1. (20) We’ve got this in the hole.

2. (21) It’s in the bag.

3. (22) He’s in the tank for Obama.

In example (22), in the tank is shown in a usage meaning ‘firmly in the camp of’. The expression dates back, again, to early twentieth century athletics, when to go in the tank meant to intentionally lose a boxing match. The expression was extended to sacrificing oneself for some greater good, usually in a political arena, but later came to be reanalyzed on the basis of features shared with expressions such as those seen in examples such as (20) and (21).

The effect of syntactic priming can be found in the highly productive [Verb + ing] the (adj) [N] schema, corresponding to dysphemism for masturbation.

1. (23) beat the bishop

2. (24) jerk the chicken

On the basis of priming from expressions such as (23) and (24), nearly any instantiation of the schema that does not have an otherwise entrenched meaning (although tactile verbs are preferred in the verb slot) is interpreted as referring to masturbation.

6 Are idioms compositional?

Idioms have a gestalt meaning, a meaning not strictly predictable based on internal elements. There is not, however, a full divorce between the form and meaning of idioms: units of meaning within idioms do contribute to the overall meaning of idiomatic expressions, albeit in a less straightforward manner that canonically literal utterances. Within EMT, the extent to which an overall, however conventionalized, idiomatic meaning can be attributed to the individual parts of a metaphorical idiom (aligning, for example, in sentence (10), beans with secret knowledge and spill with verbalization thereof) is attributable to the role of an active metaphorical schema in motivating the meaning of the idiom. The mapping is what provides a basis for analyzing out meaning over constituent elements. The autonomy of the specific mapping instantiated in the idiom − a function of the high frequency of the specific metaphorical mapping, relative to the frequency of the schema − nonetheless means that overall idiomatic meaning is not wholly derivable from these internal elements. Entrenchment, in a frequency-based model of language, can take place at any level, and in idiom a specific conceptual mapping, while also participating in a larger metaphorical schema, is entrenched separately from the overarching schema (and, given their redundancy and hierarchical arrangement, schemas) that emerges over utterances sharing links between given domains. Contextual priming can serve, within natural discourse, to make the metaphorical mapping that sanctions an idiom more salient, and more available as a basis for analyzing out metaphorical meaning over elements, allowing the type of idiom alterations and wordplay of which Nunberg et al. (Reference Nunberg, Sag and Wasow1994) (examples (25−28)), McGlone et al. (Reference McGlone, Glucksberg and Cacciari1994) (example (29)), and Billig and MacMillan (Reference Billig and MacMillan2005) (example (30)) take note, allowing speakers to subtly modify and alter the meaning of even highly fixed idiomatic expressions.

1. (25) leave no legal stone unturned

2. (26) touch a couple of nerves

3. (27) Those strings, he wouldn’t pull for you.

4. (28) My goose is cooked, but yours isn’t.

5. (29) We worried that Pat might spill the beans, but it was Chris who spilled them.

6. (30) He bit off less than he could chew.

7. (31) A Downing Street spokesman insisted the so-called smoking gun, evidence of a continuing concealed weapons programme, was not the only justification for war set out in Resolution 1441. (Guardian, 27 January 2003)

Storage, in a frequency-based model of language, is redundant. In the case of idioms, an utterance is entrenched both at the level of a specific, idiosyncratic, highly entrenched one-to-one figurative mapping, and at the level of a motivating schema that may sanction a number of similar utterances. Idioms as a class are neither compositional nor non-compositional, nor is the distinction meaningful for any subdivision of idiom or, indeed, for any particular idiom. The extent to which a speaker, in on-line processing, analyzes the meaning of an idiom out over its constituent elements will depend on the frequency of her exposure to previous instances of the specific mapping, the frequency of her previous exposure to instances of a particular sanctioning metaphorical schema, and to priming effects from context.

7 Are idioms metaphorical?

The traditional view of the relationship between metaphor and idiom is that metaphors play only a historical role in motivating idiomatic meanings: that expressions such as he spilled the beans or they went behind my back are merely the fossils of dead metaphors, and that metaphor plays no role in the on-line processing of idioms (Aitchison, Reference Aitchision1987; Cooper, Reference Cooper1986; Cruse, Reference Cruse1986; Glucksberg, Brown, & McGlone, Reference Glucksberg, Brown and McGlone1993; Strassler, Reference Strassler1982). At the opposite extreme, conceptual metaphor theory makes the assertion that metaphorical mappings are no less active in structuring idiomatic expressions than they are in structuring less conventionalized expressions (Lakoff, Reference Lakoff and Ortony1992).

Nunberg et al. (Reference Nunberg, Sag and Wasow1994) note that “idiomatic meanings are generally derived from literal meanings in conventionalized, but not arbitrary, ways” (p. 503). Metaphor, for many idioms, provides the motivation for idiomatic meaning, with the literal meaning of the idiom sharing event structure and thematic roles with the figurative meaning. In (32), the meaning of the idiom is not the same as the literal meaning of the string, and yet the situation to which it refers figuratively “preserves certain properties of pulling, and an affected object that participates in the idiomatic activity in a way that is similar in certain key respects to the way strings are pulled” (p. 504).

1. (32) pull strings

2. (33) kick the bucket

Espinal and Mateu (Reference Espinal and Mateu2010) make the case that even canonical examples of non-compositional idioms contain clear instances of compositional meaning attaching to individual words. Similarly, Hamblin and Gibbs (Reference Hamblin and Gibbs1999) note that even within relatively opaque idioms such as (33), the figurative meaning often preserves key aspects of the event structure associated with the literal meaning of the verb (preventing, in this case, the possibility of interpreting the idiom as referring to a slow death).^{Footnote 4} Within CMT, it is the invariance principle (by which those aspects of the systematicity of the source domain which are mapped to the target domain maintain the ‘cognitive typology’ − inferences, salient aspects, thematic roles, etc. − of the source domain, provided that these do not conflict with the target domain) which provides the apparatus by which aspects of the literal meaning of the expression are mapped to the figurative meaning (Lakoff, Reference Lakoff and Ortony1992). At the same time, within a family of idioms referring to the same target domain, the relationships which define the family are structured by the application of the invariance principle to a given target domain and the central metaphor that defines it (Lakoff, Reference Lakoff1987).

The claim that metaphor motivates idiomatic meanings has been made most directly by Gibbs (1994; Gibbs & O’Brien, Reference Gibbs and O’Brien1990; Gibbs et al., Reference Gibbs, Bogdanovich, Sykes and Barr1997), who, working within the framework of CMT, has offered several forms of experimental evidence to the hypothesis that underlying metaphors constrain the meaning of idioms: most notably, Gibbs and O’Brien (Reference Gibbs and O’Brien1990), which reports an experiment in which the high degree of consistency in different subjects’ mental images for the same idiomatic expressions, as well as the consistency of subjects’ mental images across different idioms which are hypothesized to be predicated on the same metaphor, are interpreted as evidencing the metaphors which underlie and motivate the meaning of common idiomatic expressions. Gibbs (Reference Gibbs1994) describes the analyzability of a given idiom as being closely related to its metaphorical underpinnings. The extent to which an idiom is analyzable directly follows from the degree of the saliency of elements internal to the idiom: for example, “many speakers view the phrase fall off the wagon as being less decomposable than pop the question because the meaning that fall contributes to fall off the wagon is not as salient as the meaning that pop contributes to pop the question” (pp. 278−279). The metaphors underlying such idioms both (i) increase the analyzability of idioms by contributing to the salience of words within the idioms, because metaphorical mappings facilitate speakers’ ability to find the connection between an idiom’s literal and figurative meaning (p. 279), and (ii) are facilitated by an idiom’s analyzability, because the easier it is for speakers to separate out individual components, the easier it is for the them to identify such components with corresponding elements from the source domain (pp. 285, 291).

Sanford (Reference Sanford2008a) corroborates Gibbs’ key claims regarding the metaphorical nature of idiom in a study that finds a phonological reduction effect on words internal to idiomatic utterances, positing such reductions as evidence of underlying metaphoricity. The study monitors subjects’ performance of the stimuli used in Gibbs and O’Brien (Reference Gibbs and O’Brien1990) to find a shorter duration for main verbs in metaphorically motivated idioms (for example, kick in kick the bucket) relative to literal counterparts (kick in kick the dog). These findings were interpreted as evidence of metaphors underlying the idioms being active in on-line processing, with the metaphor licensing high predictability for the main verb (Sanford, Reference Sanford2008a, p. 588):

Gibbs and O’Brien’s (Reference Gibbs and O’Brien1990) study demonstrates that speakers can recover underlying metaphorical motivations for idioms, and the consistency of speakers’ mental images supports the positioning of such motivations within a conceptual system shared across speakers of a language. Sanford (Reference Sanford2008a) demonstrates that underlying metaphorical schemas are automatically activated during on-line processing, with a corresponding effect on surface expression. Moreover, the study found a meaningful relationship between the degree of phonological reduction and its perceived metaphoricity, such that the main verbs of metaphorically idioms were reduced in proportion to their degree of metaphoricity. In a preliminary survey instrument, a separate group of subjects was asked to rate, on a numerical scale, the extent to which the utterances used in the experiment were metaphorical. These responses were averaged, across subjects, to arrive at a mean ‘perceived metaphoricity’ rate for each of the utterances used in the performance task. The study reports a meaningful relationship between metaphoricity and phonological reduction, such that in a regressive model, the two factors of metaphoricity and frequency (both treated as continuous variables) account for the observed reduction in the length of the main verb more accurately than frequency alone. Two separate metrics, in short, of the continuous variable metaphoricity were applied (perceived metaphoricity, and phonological reduction on the main verb). Both indicated that idiomatic utterances range along a scale from more to less metaphorical, with the relationship between the two sets of measurements indicating the viability of treating metaphoricity as a continuous variable and the viability of both approaches for measuring it.

The notion of metaphoricity as a continuous variable has direct repercussions on the debate to as the metaphorical status of idioms, pointing to a resolution shy of Lakoff’s claim that conceptual metaphors are as active in idioms as in novel metaphors, but well beyond the traditional view that idioms as a class are non-metaphorical, their meanings retrieved as an irreducible whole from the lexicon: idioms can be a little bit metaphorical. A particular idiom’s degree of metaphoricity is a function of the extent of its autonomy from the sanctioning schema, which in turn depends on the entrenchment of the specific aspect of the mapping instantiated in the idiom relative to the entrenchment of the overall metaphorical schema.