Verbal multiword expressions: Idiomaticity and flexibility

Verbal multiword expressions: Idiomaticity and flexibility Livnat Herzig Sheinfux Tali Arad Greshler Nurit Melnik Shuly Wintner

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Verbal multiword expressions: Idiomaticity and flexibility 2019 Representation and parsing of multiword expressions (Language Science Press) 10.5281/zenodo.2579035 melnik2019-multiword-expressions melnik2019-multiword-expressions.txt, the project's staged copy bf91b3ef5cea04ba4ee72326ae36f52070e35552 CC-BY-4.0 linguistics

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0 spans located by searching the stored text for the quote's exact words, allowing any whitespace between them Verbal multiword expressions - verbal idioms - and the relation between their semantic properties and the syntactic variation they permit. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Is the behaviour of idioms an idiosyncratic property of each idiom, or a consequence of more general constraints? Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Replaces decomposability with an alternative categorization that cross-classifies idioms on two dimensions, figuration and transparency. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. critique Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. idiom flexibility is a continuum rather than a two-way split, with every idiom examined showing some flexibility Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. corpus-analysis corpus-analysis Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. mechanisms the idiom whose common characterization is rigidity is searched for in a twenty-billion-word corpus, chosen because the earlier corpora were too small to distinguish an idiom that cannot vary from one that is simply too rare for its variants to appear Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. mechanisms idioms are cross-classified on two dimensions at once - figuration, whether a literal meaning can be pictured, and transparency, whether the route from that picture to the idiomatic meaning can be recovered - in place of the single decomposable/non-decomposable cut Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. mechanisms queries are written in a corpus query language over morphological features - part of speech, lemma, clitic - combined with logical operators, which the authors call particularly important for casting a wide net over non-canonical word orders, discontinuous elements and morphological inflections Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. mechanisms a query wide enough to catch variants also returns results that are not instances of the idiom, so each result is inspected by hand to remove the false positives Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. mechanisms the endpoint is switched from frequency to existence: rather than how often each variation occurs, the study verifies that every type of variation occurs at least once for each idiom Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. mechanisms argument-structure variation is observable in Hebrew because it is carried by combining one consonantal root with different morphological templates Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. mechanisms the modifier question is split in two: modifications of all types count as variations, while it is the modifier's semantic SCOPE that can provide evidence about whether idiom parts are assigned individual idiomatic meanings Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The study reports no quantitative distribution, because the wide-net queries return false positives that only manual inspection can remove. what this limits: any rate or distribution of canonical versus variant forms from this study: the authors state they do not present quantitative data, and why Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The generalisation rests on a limited set of Hebrew verbal idioms. what this limits: cross-linguistic or general claims about idiom flexibility: the authors bound the generalisation to a limited set of Hebrew verbal idioms Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The criterion under critique is described as impressionistic and circular: flexibility is taken as evidence for the very property meant to predict it. what this limits: decomposability as an independent predictor of flexibility: the paper states the diagnosis is prone to circularity with the behaviour it predicts Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The originating proposal supplied neither precise definitions of its two categories nor a procedure for telling them apart. what this limits: the decomposable/non-decomposable split as an operationalised classification: no definitions or decision procedure were given with it Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. An independent corpus study classifying by paraphrase reported the boundary between the two categories as fuzzy. what this limits: the decomposable/non-decomposable assignment as sharp: the study that applied it reports the boundary as fuzzy Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Two psycholinguistic studies of the same construct disagree on whether speakers can apply it reliably. about this quote: 2026-08-16: A RUNNING HEAD IS SPLICED INTO THE MIDDLE OF THIS QUOTE. The staged extraction of this book chapter interleaves its page furniture - '38 2 Verbal multiword expressions: Idiomaticity…' - into the body text, and this span crosses one occurrence. The quote is an exact substring of the staged file and is NOT a sentence of the paper: the words on either side of the head were never continuous. Read the span with the head deleted. Detected by an internal tool, which finds furniture by repetition rather than by shape; the two shape-based finders all-caps, caption) see neither of this chapter's 35 insertions. · what this limits: speaker agreement as established for decomposability: one study found 75% agreement on most items, another classified only 40% of 171 idioms at that threshold Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The rigidity of the field's standard example is shown to depend on corpus size; variation appears only in a very large corpus. what this limits: the canonical rigidity of kick the bucket: variation is attestable only in very large corpora, so earlier rigid classifications may reflect corpus size Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The authors' own prediction about cranberry idioms was not borne out, and they say so. what this limits: the transparency/figuration hypothesis as confirmed throughout: the cranberry class behaved opposite to the authors' stated expectation Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Neither proposed dimension accounts for idiom behaviour on its own; the paper attributes the effect to an interaction. what this limits: transparency or figuration singly as a predictor of flexibility: the paper states neither alone accounts for the behaviour Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. the rigidity claim was re-checked against a much larger corpus, enTenTen13 eliminates: that the idiom looks rigid only because it is RARE - that its apparent fixedness is an artefact of low frequency in a small corpus · outcome (stated by the tagger, no quotation): held Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. decomposability decomposability Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. transparency transparency Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. multiword expressions multiword expressions Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. verbal idioms verbal idioms Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. paraphrasability paraphrasability Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. figuration figuration Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. cranberry idioms cranberry idioms Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. transformational deficiency transformational deficiency Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. semantic idiomaticity semantic idiomaticity Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. stringent selectional restrictions stringent selectional restrictions Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. canonical form canonical form Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. flexibility flexibility Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. continuum with idioms exhibiting varying degrees of flexibility continuum with idioms exhibiting varying degrees of flexibility Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. categorically classified as either flexible or rigid categorically classified as either flexible or rigid Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. transparent figurative idioms transparent figurative idioms Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. opaque figurative idioms opaque figurative idioms Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. opaque non-figurative idioms opaque non-figurative idioms Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. transformations transformations Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. syntactic variations syntactic variations Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. argument structure variations argument structure variations Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. lexical insertions lexical insertions Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. lexical substitutions lexical substitutions Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. heTenTen 2014 heTenTen 2014 Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Corpus Query Language Corpus Query Language Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. morphological features of words morphological features of words Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. logical operators logical operators Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. cast a wide net cast a wide net Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. false positives false positives Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. manual inspection of each result manual inspection of each result Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. occurrence of all types of variation occurrence of all types of variation Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. non-canonical instances non-canonical instances Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. ascribe to these meaningless words content ascribe to these meaningless words content Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. interaction between the two dimensions interaction between the two dimensions Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. ascribe to these meaningless words content → flexibility Speakers' semantic enrichment of meaningless cranberry words makes the idioms more flexible; the paper's 'consequently' cue is not governed by the causes gate, so this claim remains unhoused. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. cranberry idioms → idiom Cranberry idioms are one of the three idiom categories; taxonomic-member is absent from the edge registry and the gate does not accept the paper's category cue as is-a. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Corpus Query Language → morphological features of words CQL targets morphological word features; operates-on is absent from the edge registry. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Corpus Query Language → logical operators CQL uses logical operators; implemented-with is absent from the edge registry. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. cast a wide net → false positives Wide-net retrieval returns non-idiom false positives; retrieval-tradeoff is absent from the edge registry. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. manual inspection of each result → false positives Manual inspection weeds out false positives; removes is absent from the edge registry. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. very large corpora → non-canonical instances Very large corpora are required to attest rare noncanonical idiom forms; prerequisite-for is absent from the edge registry. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. interaction between the two dimensions → behavior of idioms The interaction between transparency and figuration accounts for idiom behavior; accounts-for is absent from the edge registry. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. decomposability - Nunberg et al.'s sense: an idiom whose meaning, once known, can be distributed among its parts Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. transparency - the relation between an idiom's literal and idiomatic meaning, which the source proposal explicitly warns must not be confused with decomposability Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. paraphrasability - whether the idiom can be paraphrased by a similarly structured phrase, explicitly distinguished from decomposability Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. flexibility - the categorical sense inherited from Nunberg et al., on which an idiom is either transformationally productive or transformationally deficient Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. flexibility - this paper's sense: a continuum, with idioms exhibiting varying degrees rather than falling into two classes Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. figuration - the degree to which the idiom can be assigned a literal meaning that conjures a picture Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Semantic idiomaticity - MWE meaning not systematically derivable from independently used parts Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Canonical form - the unvaried idiom form contrasted with meaning-preserving transformations Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Idiom flexibility - a continuum of degrees rather than a flexible/rigid binary Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Figuration - availability of a comprehensible literal picture Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Transparency / opacity - recoverability of the motivation connecting literal and idiomatic meanings Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Syntactic variation - altered configuration with lexical material and grammatical functions preserved Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Argument-structure variation - remapping arguments or changing valence Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Lexical insertion - non-selected material added inside an idiom Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Lexical substitution - an idiom component replaced while idiomatic meaning remains Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Wide-net corpus search - high recall for noncanonical idioms at the cost of false positives Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Occurrence endpoint - verify each variation type at least once rather than estimate its distribution Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Transparency-figuration interaction - neither dimension alone accounts for idiom behavior Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. critiques → Nunberg et al. (1994) differs in: WHICH PROPERTY DETERMINES FLEXIBILITY, AND THE CHALLENGE IS MOUNTED ON TWO SEPARATE GROUNDS THE PAPER NUMBERS ITSELF: 'first due to the fuzziness of the notion of decomposability, and second, in light of empirical investigations in English and in other languages that revealed flexibility within idioms previously classified as non-decomposable.' One ground is about the criterion being unusable, the other about it being wrong where it is usable - and the replacement offered is a pair of graded dimensions, transparency and figuration, rather than a sharper version of the same binary Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. critiques → Nunberg et al. (1994) differs in: WHETHER THE CRITERION CAN BE APPLIED INDEPENDENTLY OF WHAT IT PREDICTS. 'determining whether an idiom is decomposable or not is rather impressionistic, and is prone to circularity, where its flexibility is taken as evidence for its decomposability' - so the property that is supposed to PREDICT flexibility is in practice read OFF flexibility Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. critiques → Nunberg et al. (1994) differs in: WHICH WAY THE IMPLICATION RUNS. Decomposability was proposed as 'the semantic property of idioms which PREDICTS their behavior', but 'at times this hypothesis is turned around and idiom flexibility is used as a defining property of non-decomposable idioms' - the predictor becomes the definition, at which point the hypothesis cannot fail · about this quote: 2026-08-16: A RUNNING HEAD IS SPLICED INTO THE MIDDLE OF THIS QUOTE. The staged extraction of this book chapter interleaves its page furniture - '40 2 Verbal multiword…' - into the body text, and this span crosses one occurrence. The quote is an exact substring of the staged file and is NOT a sentence of the paper: the words on either side of the head were never continuous. Read the span with the head deleted. Detected by an internal tool, which finds furniture by repetition rather than by shape; the two shape-based finders all-caps, caption) see neither of this chapter's 35 insertions. THE HYPOTHESIS IN THE DIFFERS-IN QUOTE IS NUNBERG ET AL.'S - the sentence before that quote says it 'was proposed by Nunberg et al. (1994)', with the page's running head spliced into that sentence. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. qualifies → Riehemann (2001) differs in: WHETHER A FUZZY BOUNDARY BLOCKS A CLEAR RESULT. Riehemann classified idioms by whether a similarly structured paraphrase could be found, 'Nevertheless, Quotation withheld. This notwithstanding, her findings show a clear distinction' - canonical forms accounting for about 75% of occurrences of decomposable idioms against 97% of non-decomposable ones. A classification its own author calls fuzzy still separates the data · about this quote: 2026-08-16: A RUNNING HEAD IS SPLICED INTO THE MIDDLE OF THIS QUOTE. The staged extraction of this book chapter interleaves its page furniture - '39 Livnat Herzig Sheinfux, Tali Arad Greshler, Nurit Melnik…' - into the body text, and this span crosses one occurrence. The quote is an exact substring of the staged file and is NOT a sentence of the paper: the words on either side of the head were never continuous. Read the span with the head deleted. Detected by an internal tool, which finds furniture by repetition rather than by shape; the two shape-based finders all-caps, caption) see neither of this chapter's 35 insertions. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. qualifies → Riehemann (2001) differs in: WHETHER A FUZZY BOUNDARY BLOCKS A CLEAR RESULT. Riehemann classified idioms by whether a similarly structured paraphrase could be found, 'Nevertheless, Quotation withheld. This notwithstanding, her findings show a clear distinction' - canonical forms accounting for about 75% of occurrences of decomposable idioms against 97% of non-decomposable ones. A classification its own author calls fuzzy still separates the data · about this quote: PAGE FURNITURE IS SPLICED INTO THE 'evidence' QUOTE - a page number and the chapter's author running head: '39 Livnat Herzig Sheinfux, Tali Arad Greshler, Nurit Melnik…'. The words on either side of it were never continuous on the page; read the quote with it deleted. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. qualifies → Riehemann (2001) about this quote: 2026-08-16: A RUNNING HEAD IS SPLICED INTO THE MIDDLE OF THIS QUOTE. The staged extraction of this book chapter interleaves its page furniture - '39 Livnat Herzig Sheinfux, Tali Arad Greshler, Nurit Melnik…' - into the body text, and this span crosses one occurrence. The quote is an exact substring of the staged file and is NOT a sentence of the paper: the words on either side of the head were never continuous. Read the span with the head deleted. Detected by an internal tool, which finds furniture by repetition rather than by shape; the two shape-based finders all-caps, caption) see neither of this chapter's 35 insertions. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. decomposability —distinct-from→ transparency decomposability transparency strength of the relation: 1 Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. decomposability —distinct-from→ paraphrasability decomposability paraphrasability strength of the relation: 1 Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. figuration —distinct-from→ transparency figuration transparency strength of the relation: 1 Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. syntactic variations —is-a→ transformations syntactic variations transformations the relation itself is separately evidenced · strength of the relation: 1 · the relation stated: Quotation withheld 3.2.1 Syntactic variations Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. argument structure variations —is-a→ transformations argument structure variations transformations the relation itself is separately evidenced · strength of the relation: 1 · the relation stated: Quotation withheld 3.2.1 Syntactic variations Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. lexical insertions —is-a→ transformations lexical insertions transformations the relation itself is separately evidenced · strength of the relation: 1 · the relation stated: Quotation withheld 3.2.1 Syntactic variations Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. lexical substitutions —is-a→ transformations lexical substitutions transformations the relation itself is separately evidenced · strength of the relation: 1 · the relation stated: Quotation withheld 3.2.1 Syntactic variations Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. continuum with idioms exhibiting varying degrees of flexibility —distinct-from→ categorically classified as either flexible or rigid continuum with idioms exhibiting varying degrees of flexibility categorically classified as either flexible or rigid the relation itself is separately evidenced · strength of the relation: 1 Audit 2026-09-28: DOUBTFUL - read against its full span and kept, but the span says 'we hypothesize' and 'we envision' the continuum; hedged. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The paper's central question is whether idiom behaviour is idiosyncratic or predictable from general constraints. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. An alternative classification of idioms is proposed, built on transparency and figuration. about this quote: QUOTE RECOVERED FROM THE PAPER'S OWN CHARACTERS. The recorded quote was LETTERS-ONLY IDENTICAL to this stretch of the staged text but not an exact substring of it - spaces, hyphens, ligature glyphs or mathematical operators differed, so it could never anchor. This is the file's own text between the same two letters: not produced by a rule about the damage, copied out of the file. Round-trip checked (the recovered span is letters-only equal to the original) and length-checked. The text as originally recorded is kept in evidence as extracted. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. EVIDENCE CORRECTED (RE-GROUNDED) · The hypothesis is directional and therefore testable: more transparent and more figurative idioms should bend more. EVIDENCE CORRECTED: RE-GROUNDED. The published string was in NEITHER copy of the paper. and the difference is TYPOGRAPHY, not wording: ours carried a line-break hyphen ('an id- iom') and curly quotation marks where the staged body has straight ones. The hyphen is closed by the reader's own check; the quote marks are not, and either alone makes a correct quote unverifiable. The paper states this hypothesis TWICE, verbatim, so the span was extended backwards to the sentence that makes the abstract's occurrence unique. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Idioms are not uniformly rigid; some keep their idiomatic meaning outside their canonical form. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. semantic idiomaticity semantic idiomaticity Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. transparency transparency Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. figuration figuration Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution.

The full text of this article is not redistributable, so it is not included here. The evidence sentences are withheld with it; the tag layer and its grounding status remain. The article itself is at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2579035.