Idioms with Proper names in the English Language

Outline

1.    Introduction

2.    Proper Names in Language

3.    Phraseology and Phraseological Units

4.    Compiling and Translating a List of Phraseological Units

5.    Sources and Uses of Proper Nouns

6.    The Grouping of Idioms Based on the Semantic Origin of the Proper Noun Contained

7.    Conclusion

Bibliography

1. Introduction

Naming a single entity is one of the basic speech acts, included by Searle (1975) in the class of declaratives, alongside declaring war, dismissing and bequeathing. People and places, pets and hurricanes, rock groups and festivities, institutions and commercial products, works of art and shops are given a name (Lehrer 1994). Naming serves to highlight entities that play a role in people's daily life, and to establish and maintain an individuality in society.

Object of analysis of onomastics, proper names (henceforth PNs) have been investigated by philosophers, logicians, anthropologists and psychologists, but only sporadically by linguists.

From an overview of the literature on this area of language, it emerges that special attention has been paid to theoretical issues, while investigations on specific aspects in individual languages are infrequent. This paper is concerned with proper names in English phraseology. If we examine idioms, the dominant subtype of phraseological units, we observe that they involve elements regarded as relevant for various reasons: body parts, because human beings as natural (and cultural) entities are at the centre of language; natural elements, animals, colours, clothing and food, because they are salient aspects of everyday life; references to the Bible, because it is culturally relevant in Anglo-Saxon society. So, we expect to find a number of proper nouns because of their great importance in human communication, where they are signs of cultural, linguistic, geographical, ethnic and social identity. Their analysis can offer an insight into the interplay between language and culture in phraseology.

This paper is aimed to explore the linguistic-cultural aspects and usage of phraseological units containing proper names and examine subcategories this sort of phraseological units can be related to.

2. Proper Names in Language

It is generally agreed among linguists (Hockett 1958: 311–313) that proper nouns are a universal linguistic category. Their status and function is a theoretical issue debated by many scholars, whose views are discussed in Carroll (1983), Coates (2006) and Van Langendonck (2007: 6–118). The topic is complex and controversial; that’s why, we shall focus on its key aspects only.

Proper nouns constitute a system organised according to criteria varying across cultures, and provide an interpretation of the society of which they are the expression. They are linguistic items fulfilling a referential function, i. e. they refer to single entities existing in the real world (Lyons 1977: 214–223). Like deictics, they enable primary identification of their referents; but, unlike deictics, they are not dependent on the immediate situational context (Molino 1982: 19; Lyons 1977: 214; Van Langendonck 2007: 169–71). Like nouns, proper nouns constitute an open class of words and, hence, are lexical rather than grammatical; but, unlike nouns, they lack lexical meaning.

Let us now survey the main linguistic features of proper nouns in English. Their first feature is the initial-capitalisation in writing, whose function is to distinguish a proper noun from a common noun, e.g. Rosemary vs. rosemary. They are subject to some word formation processes: for example, hypocorisms can be formed from full first names, employing various mechanisms:

With regard to grammar, names raise various issues. One issue concerns the internal structure of names: they can be mono- or polylexemic, sometimes incorporating the article (e.g. London, John Smith, The Dead Sea); personal names can be preceded by a title (e.g. Mr Smith, Aunt Mary), whose status is rather controversial.

A major issue is represented by the different uses of names. In their primary use as referring expressions, proper nouns can occupy the noun phrase slot, as in ‘He loves Mary’ or ‘They live in Oxford’, but can also function as vocatives, as in ‘I read that, Walter’, and occur in close appositional structures, as in ‘The poet Tennyson died early’.

In secondary uses, names can take on the semantic value 'entity called X', and have a plural form, as in              ‘There are few Alfreds in the class.’

They can occur with determiners: the article the or a/an, as in ‘I haven't been in touch with the Joneses for ages’ or ‘I've never met an Ophelia’; quantifiers, as in ‘I know three Ann Smiths’; possessives, as in ‘My Jennifer has won the school prize again’; demonstratives, as in ‘Who's this Penelope who's been sending you emails?’.

They can be modified by adjectives, restrictive relative clauses or prepositional phrases, as in ‘He's the famous George’, ‘This is the Paris I prefer to forget’, ‘The London of my childhood was different’ respectively.

To account for these data, analysts distinguish between the grammatical category 'proper name' having the syntactic status of NP, assigned to the aforementioned names ‘He loves Mary’, ‘They live in Oxford’, ‘I read that, Walter’, ‘The poet Tennyson died early’, and the category 'proper noun', having the status of common noun, assigned to the names in ‘There are few Alfreds in the class’ and all subsequent examples above provided.

Let us now consider the semantics of proper nouns, an issue much discussed from Mill (1867) onwards. They are diachronically motivated, and a meaningful etymon is found in most cases: e.g. family names derive from elements of common vocabulary referring to parentage (son of Richard > Richardson), or occupation (miller > Miller). But they are synchronically opaque; as stated by Lyons (1977: 198), "it is widely, though not universally, accepted that proper names do not have sense".

Provided that they are elements fulfilling a referential function, how the relation between proper noun and referent is established can be explained pragmatically. A proper noun is assigned to a given referent by some social convention, and encyclopaedic information is associated with it in long-term memory (Marmaridou 1989: 355–56). In particular, personal names may be attributed to more than one referent, yet, in discourse the encoder refers to a specific referent, situated in a given time and space. In order to understand which referent the encoder is referring to, the decoder must possess a competence of the name system as well as the chunks of encyclopaedic knowledge associated with a name to establish a link between proper noun and referent. Only when the decoder retrieves associated information from his/her knowledge, the 'virtual' referent is actualised, and the proper noun becomes a 'rigid designator' (a notion introduced by Kripke, 1972). Let us now consider the following example:

He saw Philip on the street corner.

The decoder recognises Philip as a proper noun, but does not possess the chunk necessary to pair proper noun and referent. Yet, names can arouse expectations based on encyclopaedic knowledge; so Philip is expected to be ‘the first name of a male human being’. Hence the decoder interprets the name as 'male human being', but it might refer to a dog.

In short, proper nouns constitute a class of linguistic items sharing features with both nouns and deictics. Formally, PNs share some grammatical features with common nouns, but differ from them in various respects. Both proper nouns and deictics lack lexical meaning and have a referential function; but, while the interpretation of deictics depends on the situational context, the interpretation of proper nouns depends on the linguistic context and encyclopaedic knowledge. In interpreting the proper noun, the decoder first has to recognise whether its use is referential or figurative, relying on the linguistic context; then, s/he will activate encyclopaedic knowledge or recur to her/his lexical competence, if the item is lexicalised (see below). Finally, proper nouns refer to a 'fixed' referent, while deictics to a referent that can vary according to the situational context.

Another use of names is central to understand the phenomenon under discussion. Proper nouns, in particular personal names, more rarely place names, are used figuratively as metaphors, similes, hyperboles and antonomasias, either in a creative way (e.g. He is a new Hemingway) or as lexicalised items. In these uses, proper nouns have a descriptive function: they indicate some salient attribute or property of the referent of the name. They function as nouns, taking on both a denotational and a connotational meaning originated in a selection of salient bits of information extracted from encyclopaedic knowledge about a referent. Consider the examples:

She is playing Pollyanna.

The war is becoming a Vietnam.

In the first example, Pollyanna, referring to the chief character in the novel Pollyanna (1913) by E. Porter, denotes a person constantly or excessively optimistic. In the second one, Vietnam, referring to the country where US troops intervened, takes on the meaning 'disastrous military intervention'.

The metaphorical use of proper nouns reflects cultural specificities (Wee 2006) that can pose problems in translation (Pierini 2006). As we shall see in the next sections, names show their more complex properties and their culture-specific features in phraseology. Since it abounds in cultural information, Russian scholars argue that linguo-cultural analysis is best suited for this area of language (Teliya et al. 1998).

3. Phraseology and Phraseological Units

The term 'phraseology' originated in Russian studies which developed from the late 1940's to the 1960's. It is now currently used to refer either to the set of phraseological units in a language, or to the branch of linguistics studying them. Scholars have provided various definitions of these units and various criteria to classify them. One working definition could be the following: a phraseological expression is a sequence constituted by at least two independent lexical items, stored as a unit in lexis. Its basic features, as mentioned in the literature, are: a) fixedness – it is a multiword unit, fixed in syntax as well as lexis; b) institutionalisation – it is a conventionalised unit, being the result of an initially novel expression; c) non-compositionality – its global meaning is not predictable from the meaning of its constituent words.

Phraseological expressions often carry connotations not present in their non-idiomatic synonimic expressions, and can have various functions in discourse: the informational, the evaluative, the situational, the modalising and the organisational function (Moon 1998: 217–240). When classifying them, a useful distinction is that suggested by Gläser (1998: 126–127), between word-like and sentence-like expressions. Word-like units designate a phenomenon, an object, an action, a process or state, a property in the real world; they embrace idioms and non-idioms (i. e. restricted collocations), functioning as nouns, verbs, adjectives or adverbs. Sentence-like units, such as proverbs, maxims and formulae, designate a whole state of affairs in the real world. The transition area between the two groups is occupied by units such as irreversible binomials, stereotyped similes, and fragments of proverbs.

The current analysis is focused on four phraseological types of which I am now going to give a short description. The first type is the 'idiom', a word group having the structure of: a noun phrase (e.g. a hot potato); a verb phrase (e.g. bark up the wrong tree); an adjective phrase (e.g. wet to the skin), a prepositional phrase (e.g. beyond compare), or an adverb phrase (by far). The second type is the 'irreversible binomial' (Gläser 1998: 126; Moon 1998: 152–156), a pair of two words belonging to a same part of speech joined by and, and occurring in a fixed order (e.g. odds and ends).

The third type is the 'stereotyped simile' (Moon 1998: 150–152), occurring in two structures. The first, typically occurring in predicative position, is (as) + Adj + as + NP (e.g. blind as a bat). The adjective, quite ordinary and gradable in most cases, is used literally, and the NP, used figuratively, serves to intensify the meaning of the adjective. The nouns in NP are entities (humans, animals, objects) to which British people have conventionally attributed certain characteristics, the same characteristic expressed by the adjective. Over time, each NP has come to represent the epitome of individual characteristics. The other structure is V + like + NP (e.g. eat like a horse), where the verb is used literally and the NP figuratively, to intensify the meaning of the verb. The fourth type is the 'formula' (Gläser 1998: 127; Moon 1998: 21f.), a situation-based expression serving a specific discursive function, typically occurring in spoken discourse (e.g. Good luck; It's a small world).

4. Compiling and Translating a List of Phraseological Units

By surveying a number of idiom dictionaries (CCDI, LDEI, LID, ODI), a total of 91 expressions have been collected for this paper, selecting the units labelled as 'British' or without any geographical label: 69 idioms, 5 binomials, 11 similes and 6 formulae. For each unit, the usage labels is provided, when found in dictionaries ('derogatory', 'euphemistic', 'humorous', 'colloquial/informal', 'formal', 'dated', 'old-fashioned', 'archaic', 'slang', 'literary'). The manner of arrangement chosen to present the list of data is by phraseological type and syntactic structure.

4.1 Idioms I: Noun Phrases

Idiomatic noun phrases can have various structures.

The first type is the sequence (Det) + PN:

(a)               Joe Bloggs - самый обычный, ничем не примечательный человек

(b)               a Florence Nightingale (inf) – добрая душа

(c)              a Walter Mitty – человек, мечтающий о более роскошной жизни, чем та, которой он живет

The second type is the sequence (Det) + title + PN:

(a)              Uncle Tom Cobley and all (inf) – очень длинный список имен людей

(b)               a Colonel Blimp - "полковник Блимп" (олицетворение косности и шовинизма) по имени толстого усатого полковника - комического персонажа карикатур Д.Лоу

(c)              a Mrs Grundy (derog) - "миссис Гранди" ханжа

(d)              Aunt Sally - объект критики, оскорблений

(e)              Uncle Sam - "дядя Сэм", США

The third type is constituted by sequences involving Det, Adj and PN in various combinations, except for (k):

(a)              an admirable Crichton – "несравненный Крайтон", учёный, образованный человек, учёный муж

(b)              a doubting Thomas – Фома неверующий, скептик

(c)              a nosey Parker (inf) – человек, всюду сующий свой нос

(d)              the old Adam (old-fash) – ветхий Адам, греховная природа человека

(e)              a peeping Tom – чрезмерно любопытный человек

(f)              a plain Jane - простушка

(g)              sweet Fanny Adams (euph) – пустое место (о человеке), совсем ничего

(h)              the real McCoy (inf) – всамделишный, подлинный

(i)              every Tom, Dick and Harry/

any Tom, Dick or Harry/Harriet (inf) – всякий, каждый; первый встречный; обычный, заурядный человек

(j)              every man Jack (inf) – все до одного, как один, все без исключения

(k)              the new Jerusalem (lit) - рай

The next type is represented by more complex phrases:

(Det) + PN's + N

(a)              Achilles' heel - ахиллесова пята; слабое, уязвимое место

(b)              Adam's ale – (lit) "вино Адама", вода

(c)              an Aladdin's cave – "пещера Аладдина", место изобилующее богатствами

(d)              a Benjamin's portion - изрядная доля, львиная доля

(e)              a Frankenstein's monster – создание, пугающее или опасное для своего создателя

(f)              Hobson's choice (inf) - выбор без выбора, отсутствие выбора

(g)              a Job's comforter - человек, который (подобно друзьям библейского Иова) под видом утешения только усугубляет чьё-л. горе

(h)              Morton's fork - дилемма

(i)              Nessus' shirt / shirt of Nessus (lit) – тяжелое положение

(j)              Tom Tiddler's ground - место лёгкой наживы; золотое дно; ничейная земля

Det + PN + N

(a)               a Judas kiss - поцелуй Иуды (символ предательства)

(b)               a London particular - лондонский туман

(c)               the Midas touch - "прикосновение Мидаса", превращение в золото; способность заработать на чем угодно

(d)              The Queensberry rules - "Правила Куинзберри" (свод правил профессионального бокса. Составлен в 1867)

(e)              a Potemkin village – потемкинская деревня, показная красота, скрывающая безобразность

NP1 + preposition + NP2 (the name can be in NP1 or NP2)

(a)              Alice in Wonderland (inf) – вымысел

(b)              a Jack of all trades (and master of none) (coll) – на все руки мастер

(c)              a labour of Hercules – подвиги Геракла

(d)              the man on the Clapham omnibus - "Человек с Клэпемского автобуса (омнибуса)" (по названию района на юго-западе Лондона): средний британец, обычно из малообразованных слоёв общества; рядовой гражданин, человек из народа

(e)              the mark of Cain - каинова печать: клеймо преступления, убийства; печать проклятия

(f)              a sword of Damocles (lit) – дамоклов меч

4.2 Idioms II: Verb Phrases

In this group, idioms are presented in two separate lists, whether involving a personal or a place name. The name can occur in object NP, or in PP:

Pers.:              (a)              appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober – просить кого-л. трезво подумать и пересмотреть скороспелое решение

(b)              appeal to Caesar – обратиться к высшей власти или к старшим

(c)              give a Roland for an Oliver (archaic) – дать кому-л. достойный ответ, удачно отпарировать; ответить ударом             

(d)              go to Davy Jones's locker – утонуть

(e)              keep up with the Joneses - "равняться на Джонсов", стараться жить не хуже других, жить не по средствам, чтобы не отставать от других

(f)              live the life of Riley (inf) – жить обеспеченной жизнью

(g)              not know someone from Adam (inf) – не узнать человека, о котором идет речь