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<Paper uid="E06-1043">
  <Title>Automatically Constructing a Lexicon of Verb Phrase Idiomatic Combinations</Title>
  <Section position="3" start_page="337" end_page="338" type="intro">
    <SectionTitle>
2 Flexibility and Idiomaticity of VNICs
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Although syntactically well-formed, VNICs involve a certain degree of semantic idiosyncrasy.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> Unlike compositional verb+noun combinations, the meaning of VNICs cannot be solely predicted from the meaning of their parts. There is much evidence in the linguistic literature that the semantic idiosyncrasy of idiomatic combinations is reflected in their lexical and/or syntactic behaviour.</Paragraph>
    <Section position="1" start_page="337" end_page="337" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
2.1 Lexical and Syntactic Flexibility
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> A limited number of idioms have one (or more) lexical variants, e.g., blow one's own trumpet and toot one's own horn (examples from Cowie et al.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> 1983). However, most are lexically fixed (nonproductive) to a large extent. Neither shoot the wind nor fling the breeze are typically recognized as variations of the idiom shoot the breeze. Similarly, spill the beans has an idiomatic meaning (&amp;quot;to reveal a secret&amp;quot;), while spill the peas and spread the beans have only literal interpretations.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> Idiomatic combinations are also syntactically peculiar: most VNICs cannot undergo syntactic variations and at the same time retain their idiomatic interpretations. It is important, however, tonotethatVNICsdifferwithrespecttothedegree of syntactic flexibility they exhibit. Some are syntactically inflexible for the most part, while others are more versatile; as illustrated in 1 and 2:  1. (a) Tim and Joy shot the breeze.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3"> (b) ?? Tim and Joy shot a breeze.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="4"> (c) ?? Tim and Joy shot the breezes.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="5"> (d) ?? Tim and Joy shot the fun breeze.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="6"> (e) ?? The breeze was shot by Tim and Joy.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="7"> (f) ?? The breeze that Tim and Joy kicked was fun. 2. (a) Tim spilled the beans.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="8"> (b) ? Tim spilled some beans.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="9"> (c) ?? Tim spilled the bean.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="10"> (d) Tim spilled the official beans.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="11"> (e) The beans were spilled by Tim.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="12"> (f) The beans that Tim spilled troubled Joe.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="13">  Linguists have explained the lexical and syntactic flexibility of idiomatic combinations in terms of their semantic analyzability (e.g., Glucksberg 1993; Fellbaum 1993; Nunberg et al. 1994). Semantic analyzability is inversely related to idiomaticity. For example, the meaning of shoot the breeze, a highly idiomatic expression, has nothing todowith either shoot or breeze. Incontrast, aless idiomatic expression, such as spill the beans, can be analyzed as spill corresponding to &amp;quot;reveal&amp;quot; and beans referring to &amp;quot;secret(s)&amp;quot;. Generally, the constituents ofasemantically analyzable idiom can be mapped onto their corresponding referents in the idiomatic interpretation. Hence analyzable (less idiomatic) expressions are often more open to lexical substitution and syntactic variation.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="2" start_page="337" end_page="338" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
2.2 Our Proposal
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> We use the observed connection between idiomaticity and (in)flexibility to devise statistical measures for automatically distinguishing idiomatic from literal verb+noun combinations.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> While VNICs vary in their degree of flexibility (cf. 1 and 2 above; see also Moon 1998), on the whole they contrast with compositional phrases, which are more lexically productive and appear in a wider range of syntactic forms. We thus propose to use the degree of lexical and syntactic flexibilityofagivenverb+noun combination todetermine the level of idiomaticity of the expression.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> It is important to note that semantic analyzability is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for an idiomatic combination to be lexically or syntactically flexible. Other factors, such as the communicative intentions and pragmatic constraints, can motivate a speaker to use a variant in place of a canonical form (Glucksberg, 1993).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3"> Nevertheless, lexical and syntactic flexibility may well be used as partial indicators of semantic analyzability, and hence idiomaticity.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
  </Section>
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