Formulaicity, Frame Semantics, and Pragmatics in German Binomial Expressions

Abstract

The analysis of formulaic German binomial expressions of the form N und N reveals the following characteristics. The absence of determiners, along with other morphosyntactic and semantic anomalies, makes these phrases non-compositional and thus similar to idioms; but they differ from fixed idiomatic expressions in that their structural pattern can be productively used for the creation of new pairs. These bare binomials are not exhaustively listable lexical items, nor can they be generated by a syntactic conjunction rule. Their formal properties suggest that they are complex word-like expressions—comparable in many ways to nominal compounds and, like compounds, describable by lexical rules. Their creation and use is subject to semantic and pragmatic constraints which can be subsumed under a general principle of frame structure. They can be divided into three main types: (a) lexicalized and irreversible, (b) novel but semantically motivated, and (c) semantically unmotivated but pragmatically constrained. However, sharp lines between lexicalized and novel instances, or between semantically and pragmatically motivated types, cannot be drawn on principled grounds. Bare binomials lend support to a view of language in which the ‘generative’ and the ‘idiomatic’ components are two extremes on a continuum, rather than fundamentally distinct phenomena.

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