Stretching One’s Legs: Free Word-Groups vs Idioms

The article deals with a corpus-based case study of two somatic/gesture/movement idioms containing the constituent legs, namely Russian protânut’ nogi (to die) and English to stretch one’s legs (to walk around and loosen one’s leg muscles after sitting down or lying down for a time). Using the Russi...

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Main Author: P.S. Dronov
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Kazan Federal University 2016-10-01
Series:Ученые записки Казанского университета: Серия Гуманитарные науки
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Online Access:https://kpfu.ru/portal/docs/F693475381/158_5_gum_11.pdf
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author P.S. Dronov
author_facet P.S. Dronov
author_sort P.S. Dronov
collection DOAJ
description The article deals with a corpus-based case study of two somatic/gesture/movement idioms containing the constituent legs, namely Russian protânut’ nogi (to die) and English to stretch one’s legs (to walk around and loosen one’s leg muscles after sitting down or lying down for a time). Using the Russian National Corpus, the Corpus of Contemporary American English, and British National Corpora, the author has studied the idiom modifications, variations of their figurative meanings, as well as has raised the question of cultural specificity regarding the choice of their underlying metaphors. The author has arrived at a number of conclusions, most notably at the following: the more transparent and obvious the connection between the two and the original gesture is, the more often homonymous free wordgroups occur, being virtually identical for the two languages in spite of the differences between the original metaphors. One has to bear in mind, however, that despite the presence of a connection between a somatic/gesture/movement idiom and its original gesture or movement, this connection sometimes may not seem obvious to a speaker. The data of text corpora have revealed that the idiom to stretch one’s legs is more common in British English rather than in its American counterpart; however, the homonymous free word-group is more frequent in the corpora regardless of the language variety.
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institution Kabale University
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publishDate 2016-10-01
publisher Kazan Federal University
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series Ученые записки Казанского университета: Серия Гуманитарные науки
spelling doaj-art-5f4de1d1676e4081a1834c4257a12a302025-01-02T23:31:48ZengKazan Federal UniversityУченые записки Казанского университета: Серия Гуманитарные науки2541-77382500-21712016-10-01158513251337Stretching One’s Legs: Free Word-Groups vs IdiomsP.S. Dronov0Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 25009 RussiaThe article deals with a corpus-based case study of two somatic/gesture/movement idioms containing the constituent legs, namely Russian protânut’ nogi (to die) and English to stretch one’s legs (to walk around and loosen one’s leg muscles after sitting down or lying down for a time). Using the Russian National Corpus, the Corpus of Contemporary American English, and British National Corpora, the author has studied the idiom modifications, variations of their figurative meanings, as well as has raised the question of cultural specificity regarding the choice of their underlying metaphors. The author has arrived at a number of conclusions, most notably at the following: the more transparent and obvious the connection between the two and the original gesture is, the more often homonymous free wordgroups occur, being virtually identical for the two languages in spite of the differences between the original metaphors. One has to bear in mind, however, that despite the presence of a connection between a somatic/gesture/movement idiom and its original gesture or movement, this connection sometimes may not seem obvious to a speaker. The data of text corpora have revealed that the idiom to stretch one’s legs is more common in British English rather than in its American counterpart; however, the homonymous free word-group is more frequent in the corpora regardless of the language variety.https://kpfu.ru/portal/docs/F693475381/158_5_gum_11.pdfphraseologysomatic idiomsidiom modificationsidiom regularitytext corpora
spellingShingle P.S. Dronov
Stretching One’s Legs: Free Word-Groups vs Idioms
Ученые записки Казанского университета: Серия Гуманитарные науки
phraseology
somatic idioms
idiom modifications
idiom regularity
text corpora
title Stretching One’s Legs: Free Word-Groups vs Idioms
title_full Stretching One’s Legs: Free Word-Groups vs Idioms
title_fullStr Stretching One’s Legs: Free Word-Groups vs Idioms
title_full_unstemmed Stretching One’s Legs: Free Word-Groups vs Idioms
title_short Stretching One’s Legs: Free Word-Groups vs Idioms
title_sort stretching one s legs free word groups vs idioms
topic phraseology
somatic idioms
idiom modifications
idiom regularity
text corpora
url https://kpfu.ru/portal/docs/F693475381/158_5_gum_11.pdf
work_keys_str_mv AT psdronov stretchingoneslegsfreewordgroupsvsidioms