A contrastive analysis of entrenchment and collocational force in variable-sized lexical units
László Imre Komlósi, Elisabeth Knipf · Pragmatics & beyond. New series · 2005
In this paper, we offer a unified treatment of free, semi-fixed and fixed expressions by positing unitized representations for variable-sized lexical units. We distinguish between rule-driven versus frequency-driven lexical structure and default and open processing. In frequency-driven lexical structure the retrieval of entrenched features is decisive, prompted by encoded, highly context-bound parameters. This approach allows us to see formulaic expressions as entrenched lexical units, stored in the lexicon as triples of phonological, syntactic and conceptual structures often encoding additional pragmatic and contextual information. The paper reports on semantic and pragmatic meanings in collocations, constructions, cliches, formulaic expressions, idioms, pragmatemes, figures and other metaphorical expressions. We show cross-correlation between compositionality, productivity and the types of processing in a parametrization scheme, illustrated by cross-linguistic examples of iterative structures.