Idioms in Morphology

Abstract

What makes idiomaticity an intriguing topic? Not so much that idioms are listed, but the question as to whether the mismatch between syntax and semantics they represent is reflected in their morpho-syntactic flexibility or in their lexical representation. Everyone seems to agree that (phrasal) idioms are listed in a storage place of idiosyncratic information, often called ‘the lexicon’: here syntax and morphology meet. Semantic idiosyncrasy in morphology is all around but generally is not taken as a manifestation of idiomaticity as defined by syntacticians. That is unfortunate because idiomaticity in morphology perhaps illustrates better that idiomaticity is more than non-compositionality. It is about conventionalization, manifested as collocational restrictions. This entry will demonstrate that from that perspective idiomaticity manifests itself abundantly in morphology and is differently tackled by recent theories such as Construction Morphology and Distributed Morphology.