Gibbs R W, Nayak N P
Cogn Psychol. 1989 Jan;21(1):100-38. doi: 10.1016/0010-0285(89)90004-2.
Six experiments examined why some idioms can be syntactically changed and still retain their figurative meanings (e.g., John laid down the law can be passivized as The law was laid down by John), while other idioms cannot be syntactically altered without losing their figurative meanings (e.g., John kicked the bucket cannot be passivized into The bucket was kicked by John). Our thesis was that the syntactic behavior of idioms is determined, to a large extent, but speakers' assumptions about the way in which parts of idioms contribute to their figurative interpretations as a whole. The results of our studies indicated that idioms whose individual semantic components contribute to their overall figurative meanings (e.g., go out on a limb) were judged as more syntactically flexible or productive than nondecomposable phrases (e.g., kick the bucket). These findings suggested that idioms do not form a unique class of linguistic items (e.g., as "dead" metaphors), but can share many of the same compositional properties normally associated with more "literal" language. The implications of these data for theories of syntactic productivity of idioms and for models of idiom comprehension are discussed.
六项实验探究了为何有些习语在句法上可以改变但仍保留其比喻意义（例如，John laid down the law 可以被被动化为 The law was laid down by John），而其他习语在句法上一经改变就会失去其比喻意义（例如，John kicked the bucket 不能被被动化为 The bucket was kicked by John）。我们的论点是，习语的句法行为在很大程度上是由说话者对于习语各部分如何共同构成其整体比喻意义的假设所决定的。我们的研究结果表明，其各个语义成分对整体比喻意义有贡献的习语（例如，go out on a limb），相比于不可分解的短语（例如，kick the bucket），在句法上被判定为更具灵活性或生成性。这些发现表明，习语并非构成一类独特的语言项目（例如，作为“死”隐喻），而是可以共享许多通常与更“字面”语言相关的相同的组合特性。本文讨论了这些数据对习语句法生成理论以及习语理解模型的启示。
