Stuck for words? – Non-native speaker and English idioms
Abstract : Formulaic sequences challenge foreign language learners since they take many forms and functions, and may be metaphorical. Metaphorical formulae, for instance idioms, are often neglected in teaching. However, especially at more advanced proficiency levels learners could be expected to at least understand idioms. This article reports a study on Finnish students learning English and their idiom comprehension. The results show that the students were not familiar with even the most frequent idioms. Moreover, they lacked skills to figure out the meaning of new idioms. It is suggested that enhancing lexical awareness and teaching idiom comprehension strategies could benefit the learners.
1. Introduction
Different formulaic sequences form an integral part of the vocabulary both from the viewpoint of language learning and use. The terminology and definitions referring to these language chunks vary (e.g. Schmitt & Carter 2004). Regardless of how we want to label these prefabricated patterns, there is evidence that to an extent we acquire, and also to a large part use new vocabulary as sequences or strings rather than as single items (Schmitt & Carter 2004:11-12, see also Wray 2008). However, some formulaic sequences may be more challenging than others especially for a foreign language learner. Certain expressions, for example, greetings or frequent collocations do not usually pose any particular problems due to the rather stable functions and contexts they take. For instance, How are you? or What’s up? are so fixed in their meaning and function as well as context that even though they are not to be taken literally, learners are aided by the pragmatic language knowledge when encountering these expressions. On the other hand, for instance phrasal verbs might require more effort on the part of a language learner because their contexts and co-texts vary more, their meanings are not always literal, and also, they might be a totally new concept for a second language learner (Sjöholm 1998). For instance, a Finnish learner of English might be confused when encountering expressions such as turn down/in/on/off/out simply because the Finnish language system does not have phrasal or prepositional verbs. This article looks at another non-literal type of an expression, idioms, from a foreign language learner’s view.
There are several definitions of an idiom, ranging from the strict approach that is willing to label only those fixed, metaphorical, multi-word expressions that allow no variation at all as idioms, to the liberal use of the term including basically any fixed, idiomatic expression in the language (see e.g. Moon 1998: 2-5, Nenonen & Niemi 2007). In this paper, an idiom is regarded as a multi-word expression of which meaning is different from the sum of the literal meanings of its components, e.g. no room to swing a cat. Although quite a few idioms have literal roots, these origins may go so far back in the history that they are of no assistance in understanding idioms. Quite the reverse, for instance bakers may well have added an extra bun in the customer’s bag just to be on the safe side, but a baker’s dozen these days can hardly be found. Also, idioms vary in their form and meaning (e.g. Fernando 1996) according to the context and co-text, which adds to the challenge they pose to a language user. Even though idioms can be found possibly in all languages, and are thus familiar as a concept, metaphoricity and variation together create quite a learning burden for a foreign or second language learner.
Idiom studies have developed in their approach quite radically in the course of decades. They started as looking at the form, and possible syntactic transformations idioms might undergo although the understanding was that there was not much space for variation. In psycholinguistics, the processing of idioms compared to processing of single words has been under much scrutiny and finally, the metaphoricity of idioms has come to the fore. Nowadays, idioms are perceived differently from the previously dominant formalist point of view as changing and changeable entities of which origins are often to be detected. (see e.g. Dahl 2007; Erman 2007; Fernando 1996; Gibbs 1990, 1992; Kövecses & Szabo 1996; Wray 2008). Further evidence of this has been recently found in slips of the tongue encountered in idiom production (Kuiper et al. 2007; Mäntylä & Dufva 2007).
Even though from a linguistics viewpoint, idioms themselves have been investigated rather thoroughly, in SLA studies other types of formulaic sequences have been more prominent than idioms. A number of studies have been carried out on native speakers of English, children or hearing impaired in particular, and their understanding of idioms (e.g. Gibbs 1987; Nippold & Martin 1989; Nippold & Rudzinski 1993). These studies have shown that just as other areas of metaphorical language, also idioms and their understanding appear in children’s language repertoire at school age and keep developing through adolescence. Studies on native adults and idioms have mostly concentrated on tracking down processing idioms and native adults’ understanding and interpreting idioms have been taken for granted. However, idioms and the foreign language learner are an area less studied and there are only few studies on non-native adults (see Arnaud & Savignon 1997; Irujo 1986a, 1986b, 1993; Dörnyei et al. 2004; Schmitt et al. 2004). It is true that even the most frequent idioms are fairly infrequent when looking at the vocabulary as a whole and, thus, perhaps not the most significant element in second language acquisition. However, they do exist, are used in everyday language, and at least comprehending them is vital also to a SLL. The fact that they are often transformed according to the context makes the understanding of idioms even more challenging. One suggested reason for the lack of idiom research in SLA has been the minor role idioms play in language teaching. In schools, idioms are not too much noticed, perhaps not even mentioned.
2. Research questions
In Finnish schools, well over 90 per cent of children learn English as their first foreign language and by the end of their compulsory education, they have studied English for seven years. Most of them carry on learning English in secondary and tertiary education. Considering the role of formulaic sequences in language learning, it could be assumed that with this amount of ESL, some attention would be paid on idioms. Also, informal learning contexts, such as gaming forums, chat rooms, etc. bring plenty of English input for a language learner in Finland (Nikula & Leppänen 2008). At university, the students who study the English language do not have much explicit teaching of the language but are taught different areas of linguistics and culture in English. Their language skills are tested in the entrance exam, and are expected to be at a very advanced level when they enter university, and thus, skills, apart from academic oral and written skills are taught only implicitly. It could be assumed that since the students are at an advanced level of proficiency, also their idiom skills should be fairly good.
On the other hand, idioms vary in form and meaning, and although previous studies often have treated idiom meanings as unquestionable, not even native speakers agree on their meanings (Sajavaara et al. 1999). Hence, also native speakers’ idiom interpretations should be investigated. Furthermore, it is worthwhile examining which idiom characteristics would seem to help or hinder in idiom interpretation. Therefore, this study sought answers to following questions:
- How well do advanced Finnish students of English understand English idioms and to what extent their interpretations agree or disagree with those by monolingual dictionaries and native speakers?
- To what extent do native speakers agree on potential idiom meanings offered by corpus-based monolingual dictionaries and each other?
- How do different characteristics that have been proposed to affect idiom interpretation and understanding, frequency, transparency, and transformability influence language users’, NS or NNS, judgement of meaning?
3. The Data
The participants in this study were 144 Finnish university students who all studied English at the University of Jyväskylä either as their major or minor subject. Some of them were first year students, some advanced level (4th or 5th year) students. Most of the participants had started studying English at the age of nine in comprehensive school, which means they had at least ten years of English studies behind them. Also, to enrol on the university to study English, the students have to be at a fairly advanced level. Thus, the participants could be assumed have adequate language skills. Also, since idiom comprehension has been shown to develop as late as in adolescence, as young adults the students ought to be familiar with idioms and metaphorical language as a concept. As a native control group, there were 36 British university students, and some who had already graduated from a university (Lancaster and Thames Valley University).
The data were gathered through an idiom questionnaire (the items in the questionnaire can be found in Table 1 in Appendix). The idioms were taken from Collins Cobuild Dictionary of Idioms (1995) that is corpus-based and in which idioms are marked according to their frequencies. There were 45 idioms altogether, representing 3 different frequency categories. Each idiom had 4 alternative interpretations of which 1-3 were correct. Also, there was a blank space for possible additional meanings participants thought were missing, or any other alterations or comments they wanted to make. In writing the alternatives, two other corpus-based idiom dictionaries, Longman (1979) and Oxford (1983) were also consulted. The distractors were created according to various principles. If possible, the literal meaning of an idiom was used a distractor. Idioms with a similar appearance but different meaning were used as distractors. Also, often an idiom included a single word with a metaphorical meaning of its own, and this was taken advantage of when creating distractors. Lastly, since also the effect of NNSs’ mother tongue was being examined, Finnish expressions and idioms were used to write some of the distractors (for a full list of explanations for the distractors, see Mäntylä 2004, 217-225).
Idioms were presented without a context to allow as many interpretations for them as possible. Moon (1998:185) states that in addition to potential ambiguity in isolation, idioms may be ambiguous also in context if they are unfamiliar. Furthermore, even though context may assist in inferring the meaning of an unfamiliar expression, it may also mislead (Kelly 1990). Just as single words, an idiom can also have several meanings, as a quick glance at any idiom dictionary shows. Also, much of the ambiguity of idioms lies in their polysemy, and even though context more often than not probably does help to realise that the expression should not be taken literally, for instance, a bull is very unlikely to appear in a china store¸ it does not that often provide the reader/hearer with the correct one from several potential metaphorical interpretations.
Finally, the questionnaire also had space for the respondents’ own comments. Particularly the non-native participants seized the opportunity to express their frustration on the test: they perceived idioms as very difficult.
In the analysis, the frequency and percentage of each response alternative per idiom in the two groups was counted. To examine the significance of the differences between the two groups, Fisher’s two-sided exact test was used. Fisher’s test was chosen because quite a few alternatives proved to be unattractive to the native speakers, and the number of responses in several cells was less than five.
4. The Results
The results of the study did not flatter the non-native participants. When compared to native English speakers, Finns were left far behind (a full list of figures showing the percentages and the comparison between NSs and NNSs can be found in Table 1 in the Appendix). However, they did not do as poorly as they themselves assumed in their comments after completing the questionnaire. Quite a few non-native participants emphasised that idioms had never been taught at school, and that they were not quite sure how to define an idiom, let alone being able to figure out the meaning of unfamiliar expressions. Nevertheless, despite their comments, they did do fairly well in the test, and knew (or guessed) more than they had expected.
As could be expected, idioms that had a direct translation equivalent in Finnish were the easiest for the non-native participants. For instance, give the green light was correctly recognised by 97.2 % of Finns, probably because of a similar expression with a similar meaning in Finnish, näyttää vihreää valoa. On the other hand, one could argue that the reason for certain idioms having been recognised by the testees was perhaps not the proximity of a mother tongue expression but rather, the transparency of an idiom that seemed to assist especially non-native speakers. Interestingly, transparency did not seem to be of assistance to native speaker participants (Mäntylä 2004, 171).
The reason for this could be that the participants perhaps were only vaguely familiar with some expressions and were led to choose distractors rather than correct alternatives. Another possible explanation is that an idiom can carry several meanings, and very often language users are familiar with one or two of them, but have not met the expression in all possible contexts. Thus, the depth of their lexical knowledge is yet to develop.
As a group, non-natives turned out to be very heterogeneous when interpreting idioms. They were more willing to choose several alternatives out of the four offered instead of just one, but they also chose quite often clearly wrong answers, deviating from the dictionaries and native speaker answers. This perhaps reveals that there was an amount of guesswork behind their replies, a disadvantage with a multiple choice questionnaire. Naturally, some wrong answers can be explained by e.g. negative transfer from mother tongue, but not all of them. On the other hand, had the idioms been presented in a context, non-natives might have given more unanimous answers.
Native speakers, in their turn, were more homogeneous in their interpretations. However, they, too, did disagree about the meanings, and often chose only one or two of several dictionary-based, correct alternatives. They also actively wrote their own interpretations if they were not happy with the given alternatives. Albeit a small group, the differences in interpretations indisputably showed that idioms can carry several meanings and that native speakers do not always agree on these. Example 1 below shows how native speakers were more prone to choose just one meaning alternative and did not pick several options even though they were offered by corpus-based dictionaries. Example 1 also illustrates how non-native respondents were often lured by transparency, and even misled by it.
Example 1. A sample of the results
| A test idiom with its four meaning alternatives. The answers suggested by the dictionaries are given in bold. 14. get the chop |
% natives accepted | % non-natives accepted | Fisher’s Exact test (two-sided) < 0.05** |
| a) be beaten | 8.3 | 40.3 | 0 |
| b) be sacked | 97.2 | 38.9 | 0 |
| c) be killed | 13.9 | 13.2 | 1 |
| d) be shocked | 0 | 15.3 | 0.009 |
More interesting than the ratio of known/unknown idioms, however, was what may have assisted or caused trouble in the interpretation, in particular for non-natives. Therefore, it was necessary to take a closer look at the idioms themselves, and their characteristics to find out what may have affected the participants. To inspect the idioms more carefully, and what may have led to the wrong track in their interpretation, it seemed worthwhile to categorise the expressions according to their characteristics. As a basis for this categorisation, I used the classification system by Chitra Fernando (1996). In this classification, idioms are divided into categories according to two basic features, degree of metaphoricity and fixedness in form. In the original table of categories, there are more classes since Fernando deals with several non-literal, fixed idiomatic expressions such as greetings and collocations that are not included in idioms. Also, I was more tolerant for variations than Fernando. Most idioms do allow transformations in tense, number and word order, so those were excluded and only other types of alterations were regarded as variability. The division between literal/non-literal refers to the degree of figurativeness and the relationship to the literal meaning. Literal here means that the literal meaning of the expression makes sense, and is somehow connected to the figurative. All idioms are non-literal by definition, but the transparent ones are often also literal. Totally opaque idioms and those transparent expressions of which literal meaning does not make any sense or is impossible in practice, were labelled as non-literal only. It should be borne in mind that the classification of idioms is difficult, and always subjective. What may seem like a transparent expression to one language user, could be totally opaque to another. Altogether, I ended up with six categories:
- Invariant and non-literal expressions (jump out of one’s skin)
- Invariant and both literal and non-literal (tip of the iceberg)
- Variant and non-literal (let the cat out of the bag)
- Variant and both literal and non-literal (give the green light)
- Invariant with a specialized subsense in one item (foot the bill)
- Variant (restricted) with a specialized subsense in one item (have a go at someone/something)
In addition to literalness and transformability, there are other factors that may have their effect on the comprehension of idioms, for instance participants’ native language, idiom’s frequency, syntactic structure of the expression, the paraphrase used instead of the idiom, etc. Of these, I concentrated on the first two mentioned as the syntactic structure had not been paid attention to when writing the questionnaire and, thus, idioms were fairly alike as to their structure. Also, there are numerous ways to rephrase the meaning of an idiom, thus examining this aspect did not seem worthwhile.
Not surprisingly, the more transparent idioms were among the easiest ones. If the literal meaning of an idiom made sense, and was connected to the figurative meaning through, for instance, an image it created, the non-native participants had fewer problems in recognising the meaning, e.g. give the green light, throw off balance. More significant role, however, was played by mother tongue expressions. As seems fairly obvious, and as the scarce studies there are have shown (Irujo 1986b, 1993), the expressions that had a similar equivalent in the respondents’ mother tongue, whether literal or not, were the easiest ones, e.g. pull strings - vetää (oikeista) naruista, smell the rat - haistaa palaneen käryä. However, relying on mother tongue also caused problems as there were some false friends among the idioms, e.g. jump out of your skin was instead of shock or fear interpreted as being very angry, in the Finnish manner of hypätä nahoistaan.
Nonetheless, more problematic than depending on Finnish was seeing idioms as expressions similar to clauses or sentences, that is, not as wholes to be interpreted and understood as such. The participants seemed to pick one single word and then looked for a Finnish idiom including that same word but, unfortunately, carrying a different meaning, e.g. let the cat out of bag - nostaa kissa pöydälle (to start talking about a (delicate) matter left undiscussed before), be home and dry - olla kuivilla (to escape from a situation, e.g. a crime scene without being caught and punished). Only occasionally did the non-native participants mix an idiom to another English idiom, for instance, pull faces - pull someone’s leg. Even then, Finnish may have had its impact (vetää nenästä - to cheat).
Native speakers, in their turn, were more often misled by expressions close to each other in their wording, e.g. bring home - bring home the bacon. Also, both natives and non-natives were puzzled by less frequent expressions, for example, take an early bath, and expressions of which origins lie in some special language like sports (kick into touch) and may not be that often encountered in everyday language.
Otherwise, frequency did not seem to affect comprehension. The idioms in the questionnaire represented three different frequency bands, and there were easy and difficult idioms within each band. This may be because idioms, as Collins Cobuild (1995) says, even the most frequent ones, are far from the frequencies of frequent single words. Transformability did not seem to play a role, either, as both variable and invariable idioms were equally easy or difficult to the participants.
5. Characteristics of an idiom helping the language user
The fact that the most fundamental characteristic of idioms is metaphoricity seemed to be unknown to most of the non-native participants which was quite a surprise. They were bound to be familiar with idioms in their native language, and as language students, one could expect them to be able to understand linguistic concepts. The instructions in the questionnaire explicitly mentioned the word ‘idiom’ but did not, however, explain what an idiom is. Had the participants been explained the concept of an idiom, the results might have been different. On the other hand, then the research questions would have been different. As for native speaker participants, the tendency to choose only one or two alternatives of the given ones would suggest that they approached the test differently: attempting to recognise the meaning familiar to them and not pondering on other possible alternatives. With the less familiar idioms, the clues that idioms carry to their figurative meaning were left unnoticed and instead, expressions, or single words in them, were taken literally. If the participants had considered idioms as entities, and moreover, possessed the skills or tools to crack the idioms, the literal meaning of the whole expression or the image it creates might have led on the right track in figuring out the meaning. Idiom meanings are by no means arbitrary although they might occasionally appear like that to a today’s eye not aware of their origins, and equally unaware of the nature and characteristics of idioms (Gibbs 1990, 1992; Kövecses & Szabó 1996; Lakoff 1987).
Another significant characteristic of idioms is the degree of frozenness. All idioms are more or less fixed in form although most of them allow both lexical and syntactic transformations. Most importantly, idioms are wholes, and they are not to be divided into separate words. Even though some, more transparent idioms can perhaps be analysed, chopped into pieces and each word can be claimed to correspond to a part of the metaphorical meaning of the whole (Pulman 1993), this does not seem rational when aiming at comprehending an idiom. Pulman (1993) argues that even though some idioms are transparent, there still are a number of opaque, totally non-transparent idioms, e.g. kick the bucket. These cannot be decomposed in a similar manner.
Yet, a plenty of idioms that nowadays seem opaque, like kick the bucket, have originally referred to something quite concrete, analysable to people of that time. Also, idioms that may at first sight seem opaque, often carry the image of the figurative meaning, and though it may not be easy to figure out the meaning by imaginary creation and logic, once you get to know the meaning of an idiom, it is easy to see the link between the figurative meaning of the idiom and the image created by its literal meaning, e.g. chew the fat, dog’s dinner. Due to this, for some language users, an idiom is more arbitrary than for others, and there are bound to be unfamiliar, totally arbitrary and thus incomprehensible idioms in a language as well (Lakoff 1987: 451). Had the participants been better acquainted with idioms in general, and their etymologies in particular, the results would have looked different. Teaching idiom etymologies has been one suggested solution to the dilemma of how to include idioms in the syllabus when there are so many other, more important areas to teach to language learners (Boers et. al. 2004). In addition to etymological information, mental imagery as a general strategy towards unfamiliar idioms might have assisted the participants (see also Duthie et. al. 2008; Sajavaara et al. 1999). Picturing the event or situation an idiom describes often gives some clues to the metaphorical meaning the idiom carries.
To make the situation even more complicated, some idioms may carry their literal meaning depending on the context. Footing the bill can hardly have any literal meanings but a bucket can be kicked quite literally. It may be difficult to recognise an unfamiliar idiom in a text as an idiom, but it may also be problematic to notice when an expression known as an idiom is not an idiom but just words after one another in an ordinary sentence, although corpora analyses show that literal interpretations are very rare compared to figurative ones (Moon 1998: 180-181). Whatever the percentage of literal/figurative meanings and interpretations, from the viewpoint of a non-native speaker, the world of idioms is still rather complex, and unravelling idiom meanings quite a laborious task.
6. Much ado about nothing or clues to teaching
Non-native participants in this study faced a dual problem: firstly, they were uncertain about the nature of idioms, and secondly, most idioms presented were new to them. Because of the first problem, they were not equipped to tackle the latter. The tools they possessed were relying on the literal meaning of single words, and their mother tongue, Finnish. In some cases, Finnish provided help, but there were also false friends, particularly among idioms that shared only one word. When relying on mother tongue, participants grabbed one single word, and looked for an idiom in Finnish containing that same word. They did not know how to approach idioms to understand them as they did not see idioms as entities but as word strings consisting of separate words. Therefore, they were not able to try to approach the meaning via the image the expression creates. On the other hand, also NSs seemed to be unaware of idiom characteristics but since their vocabulary was wider than that of NNSs, they were able to perform better in the test. Had the NSs been more familiar with idiom features, one could assume that it would have shown in higher recognition rate of transparent idioms. This was not, however, the case.
Non-native participants also commented that idioms have not been taught at school; therefore, their meanings were unfamiliar. Perhaps the participants were used to leaning too heavily on school teaching and vocabulary lists in school books, and not taking full advantage of, for instance, literature or other informal learning contexts. If a word or an expression has not appeared in a list and been studied by heart, its meaning cannot be inferred. This may partly explain the poor result with the first year students of whom many had entered university straight after leaving school. Fourth and fifth year students succeeded slightly better with the questionnaire, but they can also be assumed to be at a more advanced level of English in general. However, all NNSs had attended at least basic lessons on morphology and word-formation, and it could have been expected that they had to an extent been able to extend this knowledge to formulaic sequences.
All in all, the students’ puzzlement when facing idioms is not that surprising. They are more or less neglected in school teaching, and, as the results seem to indicate, also at university level. There are very few, if any, idioms that would be necessary for non-native speaker production (Yorio 1980: 438). However, recognising and understanding idioms is vital even for a non-native speaker, especially at more advanced levels of proficiency. One cannot read a newspaper, for instance, without encountering idioms and their transformations. Considering the relative infrequency of idioms when compared to other items of vocabulary, and also the fact that even understanding them is a challenge, perhaps more useful than pondering on which idioms to choose to teach to students, would be to concentrate on strategies that would aim at recognising and comprehending idioms. The number of idioms in a given language is so huge that trying to decide which ones are worth teaching and which not does not seem reasonable. For the same reason, teaching etymological clues does not seem reasonable. Since in a number of cases, the origins of an idiom are in an event or phenomenon no longer present in our everyday lives, learning idioms through their roots seems to add to learning burden. Etymology certainly helps to understand the meaning of an idiom, and may help in memorising an idiom, but is not perhaps the most useful tool in trying to figure out the meaning of completely new idioms.
Furthermore, a lot of language learning takes place in informal settings. A Finnish language learner, for instance, is exposed to plenty of English through different media, travelling, etc. Recognising an idiom when meeting one would greatly enhance learners’ vocabulary acquisition and also comprehension of everyday English.
The results of this study suggest that mere awareness of idioms’ metaphorical nature is somewhat lacking, and thus, raising and enhancing awareness of formulaic sequences and metaphorical language should be a starting point in teaching idioms. If the participants in this study had been able to see idioms as entities rather than picking out single words and rushing to conclusions, the results probably would have been different. Mental imagery as a strategy is also worth mentioning, as, although it may not always produce the wanted result, it can be applied to any idiom once an expression has been identified as a metaphorical entity. Mental imagery, together with inferring from the context, is a tool that can be applied to basically any idiom and is thus a useful instrument in any language user’s toolkit.
Appendix 1: The acceptability of four meaning alternatives in each participant group and the results of Fisher’s Exact Test
References
Arnaud, Pierre J.L. & S. Savignon. 1997. “Rare words, complex lexical units and the advanced learner.” in J. Coady & T. Huckin (Eds.) Second language vocabulary acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 157-173.
Boers, F., M. Demecheleer, and J. Eyckmans. 2004. “Etymological elaboration as a strategy for learning idioms.” In P. Bogaards and B. Laufer (Eds). Vocabulary in a Second Language: Selection, Acquisition and Testing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 53-78.
Collins Cobuild Dictionary of Idioms 1995. London: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
Dahl, Ö. 2007. Formulaicity above and below the word level. A plenary speech given at the 25th UWM Linguistics Symposium, April 18-21, The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Duthie, J., M. Nippold, J. Billow and T. Mansfield. 2008. “Mental imagery of concrete proverbs: A developmental study of children, adolescents, and adults.” Applied Psycholinguistics 29, 151–173.
Dörnyei, Z., V. Durow and K. Zahran. 2004. “Individual differences and their effects on formualaic sequence acquisition.” In N. Schmitt (Ed.) Formulaic Sequences. 2004. Ed. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 87-106.
Erman, Britt. 2007. Formulaic language from a learner perspective. A plenary speech given at the 25th UWM Linguistics Symposium, April 18-21, The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Fernando, C. 1996. Idioms and Idiomaticity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gibbs, R. 1987. “Linguistic Factors in Children's Understanding of Idioms.” Journal of Child Language. 14, 4, 569-586.
----------. 1990. “Psycholinguistic Studies on the Conceptual Basis of Idiomaticity.” Cognitive Linguistics. 1, 4, 417-451.
----------. 1992. “What Do Idioms Really Mean?” Journal of Memory and Language. 31, 4, 485-506.
Irujo, S. 1986a. “Don't Put Your Leg in Your Mouth: Transfer in the Acquisition of Idioms in a Second Language.” TESOL Quarterly. 20, 2, 287-304.
----------. 1986b. “A Piece of Cake: Learning and Teaching Idioms.” ELT Journal. 40, 3, 236-242.
----------. 1993. “Steering Clear: Avoidance in the Production of Idioms.” IRAL. 31, 3, 205-219.
Kelly, P. 1990. “Guessing: no substitute for systematic learning of lexis.” System. 18, 2, 199-207.
Kuiper, K., M.-E. van Egmond, G. Kempen, S. Sprenger. 2007. “Slipping on superlemmas. Multi-word lexical items in speech production.” The Mental Lexicon. 2, 3, 313–357.
Kövecses, Z. and P. Szabó. 1996. “Idioms: A view from cognitive semantics.” Applied Linguistics. 17, 3, 326-355.
Lakoff, G. 1987. Women, fire and dangerous things. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
Longman Dictionary of English Idioms 1979. Harlow: Longman Group UK Ltd.
McGlone, M., S. Glucksberg and C. Cacciari 1994. “Semantic Productivity and IdiomComprehension.” Discourse Processes. 17, 2, 167-190.
Moon, R. 1998. Fixed expressions and idioms in English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mäntylä, K. 2004. Idioms and language users. The effect of the characteristics of idioms on their recognition and interpretation by native and non-native speakers of English. Jyväskylä Studies in Humanities, nro 13.
Mäntylä K. and Dufva H. 2007. “Slippery idioms: Formulaic sequences and slips of the tongue” in Collocations and Idioms 1. Papers from the first Nordic conference on syntactic freezes. Eds. Jussi Niemi & Marja Nenonen. Joensuu: University of Joensuu, 200-212.
Nenonen, M. & S. Niemi. 2007. (eds) Collocations and Idioms 1. Papers from the first Nordic conference on syntactic freezes. Joensuu: Joensuu University.
Nikula, T. & S. Leppänen. 2008. “Tutkimuksen tuloksia ja haasteita.” In S.Leppänen, T.Nikula and L. Kääntä (eds.) Kolmas kotimainen. Lähikuvia englannin käytöstä Suomessa. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden seura, 422-428.
Nippold, M. and S. Tarrant Martin.1989. “Idiom Interpretation in Isolation versus Context: A Developmental Study with Adolescents.” Journal of Speech and Hearing Research. 32, 1, 59-66.
Nippold, M. and M. Rudzinski.1993. “Familiarity and Transparency in Idiom Explanation: A Developmental Study of Children and Adolescents.” Journal of Speech and Hearing Research. 36, 4, 728-737.
Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English Vol 2: English Idioms 1983. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pulman, S. 1993. “The recognition and interpretation of idioms.” in C. Cacciari and P. Tabossi (Eds.) Idioms: Processing, structure and interpretation. Hillsdale, NJ (& Hove and London): Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 249-270.
Sajavaara, K., H. Dufva, R. Alanen, K. Mäntylä, M. Pääkkönen & S. Saarela. 1999. Children’s metalinguistic awareness in L1 and L2. in Multiple languages – multiple perspectives. Eds. P. Pietilä & O.-P. Salo, AFinLA Yearbook 57, 218- 227.
Schmitt, N. and R. Carter. 2004. “Formulaic sequences in action.” In N. Schmitt (Ed.) Formulaic Sequences. 2004. Ed. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1-22.
Schmitt, N., Z. Dörnyei, S. Adolphs and V. Durow. 2004. “ Knowledge and acquisition of formulaic sequences: A longitudinal study. In N. Schmitt (Ed.) Formulaic Sequences. 2004. Ed. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 55-86.
Sjöholm, K. 1998. “Avoidance of English phrasal verbs among second language learners.” In D. Albrechtsen, B. Henriksen, I. Mees and E. Poulsen (Eds.) Perspectives on foreign and second language pedagogy. Odense: Odense University Press, 135-147.
Wray, A. 2008. Formulaic language: Pushing the Boundaries. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Yorio, C. 1980. Conventionalized Language Forms and the Development of Communicative Competence. TESOL Quarterly XIV (4), 433-442.
Kieliskooppi
October 2012