Langlotz Andreas. Idiomatic Creativity: A Cognitive-Linguistic Model of Idiom-Representation and Idiom-Variation in English

John Benjamins, 2006. — xii, 325 pages. — (Human Cognitive Processing). — ISBN: 90-272-2370-X.”This book addresses a central problem in phraseological and linguistic analysis. The creative structure and the creative use of idioms. Let me therefore start creatively, with a highly speculative metaphorical hypothesis: idioms are to linguists and language users what the Cheshire cat is to Alice. Idioms are peculiar linguistic constructions that have raisedmany eyebrows in linguistics and often confuse newcomers to a language. Indeed, the expression grin like a Cheshire cat is an idiom. More precisely, it is an idiomatic comparison whose motivation has become opaque: as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) indicates, the phrase is of undetermined origin. So why should people who grin broadly grin like a Cheshire cat?; after all, what, precisely, is a Chesire cat? These questions point to the fact that according to the perception of most speakers of English this expression behaves like its allegorical incarnation in Alice in Wonderland. The idiomatic meaning of the expression, ‘grin broadly,’ leaves us with a grin without a cat. This is what makes this idiom curious… ”A preliminary definition of idiom
Introducing the problem: Idioms and creativity – a contradiction in terms?
Towards a cognitive-linguistic approach to idiom representation and variation
Idiom representation and variation – a hard nut to crack
Idioms as semantic units – the orthodox view
The compositional view
Proverbiality – the functional motivation of idioms
Outlook – desiderata for a cognitive-linguistic model of idiom representation and variation
The cognitive architecture of meaning and language
Basic cognitive processes
The mental representation of knowledge and meaning
Complex patterns of semantic extension
Cognitive Grammar: The mental representation of linguistic knowledge
Summarising overview
Idiom representation – a cognitive-linguistic model
Adapting idioms to the cognitive-linguistic framework
A cognitive-linguistic account of compositeness
Institutionalisation and lexicalisation – the cognitive entrenchment of an idiom
A cognitive-linguistic anatomy of the internal semantic structure of idioms
Conceptual patterns shaping the internal semantic structure of idioms
Typical patterns of figuration reflected by idioms
The cognitive functionality of idioms
The conceptual motivation of idioms denoting success, progress and failure
What is success, progress and failure? – A cognitive-model
The conceptual source domains for spf-idioms
Metonymic and metaphtonymyic motivation
Motivation by emblems
Opaque and constructionally-idiosyncratic spf-idioms
Implications for the psycholinguistic controversy about metaphorical motivation
Idiom variation and variability – a cognitive-linguistic model
Frozenness vs. variability – towards a cognitive-linguistic view
Idiomatic creativity
Subtypes of idiom variation
Principles of idiom variation
Cognitive constraints on idiom variation
The lexicogrammatical variation of idioms denoting success, progress and failure
Database and analytical procedure
Articles and article-variation in spf-idioms
Number and number variation in idioms
Passivisation – idiom variation at the clause level
Adnominal modification
Lexical substitution
Controversial data
Conclusions and outlook