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Context-Induced Reinterpretation of Phraseological Verbs

Phrasal Verbs in Late Modern English

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Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology (EUROPHRAS 2019)

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Abstract

The aim of the present study is to examine the semantic changes affecting phraseological verbs, and specifically phrasal verbs (hereafter PVs), during the Late Modern English period (1750–1850). In particular, the objective is to describe cases of context-induced reinterpretation and the related phenomena of lexicalization and/or idiomatization. Semantic changes undergone by PVs to date have mainly been linked to metaphoric and metonymic processes and to analogical thinking (Brinton 1988). However, they have never been examined following a phraseological perspective (Sinclair 1991, 2004), and considering the “extended” context of use (Stubbs 2002) as catalyst for change. In this view, if the meaning of a single word is the result of its interaction with the immediate context (Bublitz 1996), then the semantic evolution of PVs should be seen as the result of their context-induced reinterpretation. The present research has been conducted on the Late Modern English-Old Bailey Corpus (1750–1850), a corpus compiled by drawing texts from the Proceedings of the Old Bailey, London Central Criminal Court, and annotated with the Visual Interactive Syntax Learning interface (VISL). The findings reveal that the lexical environment has played a major role in the semantic renewal of PVs: they were affected by the development of aspectual properties in some cases, in others, they were instead characterized by the intensification of the already acquired aspectual features, both driven by processes of lexicalization and idiomatization.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Aspectual PVs contain particles which mark the aktionsart of the verb (Thim 2012: 16–19). Aktionsart is “an indication of the intrinsic temporal qualities of a situation” (Brinton 1988: 3).

  2. 2.

    Grammaticalization is “the change whereby (…) [an] item may become more grammatical”, whereas lexicalization is intended as the change “that results in the production of new lexical/contentful forms” (Brinton and Traugott 2005: 99, 96). Idiomatization is the linguistic process prompting increasing demotivation.

  3. 3.

    I am borrowing here the concept coined by Bublitz (1996) in his investigation on semantic prosody.

  4. 4.

    The LModE period is linked to the latter end of the standardization process and, linguistically speaking, is characterized by many features common to PDE but also by still ongoing changes (Tieken-Boon van Ostade 2009; Hundt 2014).

  5. 5.

    The importance of the lexical environment has been mentioned by Leone (2016b) but not extensively examined.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Rita Calabrese for her professional support.

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  1. University of Salerno, 84084, Fisciano, SA, Italy

    Ljubica Leone

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  1. Ljubica Leone
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Correspondence to Ljubica Leone .

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  1. University of Malaga, Malaga, Spain

    Gloria Corpas Pastor

  2. University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK

    Ruslan Mitkov

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Leone, L. (2019). Context-Induced Reinterpretation of Phraseological Verbs. In: Corpas Pastor, G., Mitkov, R. (eds) Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology. EUROPHRAS 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11755. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30135-4_19

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