The central point of discussion is how idiom motivation is reflected in the Conventional Figurative Language Theory. Most lexical units are motivated to a certain extent, i.e. they point to their actual meaning via the meanings of their parts, either parts of their structure or of their conceptual basis. Several types of motivation can be distinguished in the field of phraseology. Apart from the quite small number of idioms where no comprehensible link can be found between the literal reading and the figurative meaning that would allow for a meaningful interpretation of a given expression, all other idioms have to be considered transparent or motivated. Idioms form a very heterogeneous domain in terms of motivation. There are levels of motivation and semantic predictability both from the perspective of a speaker and from the perspective of the semantic structure of a given unit. In this paper, we present a typology of motivation that captures all types of transparent idioms. The typology of idiom motivation connects our theory to the Cognitive Theory of Metaphor and to the Construction Grammar approaches.

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Добровольский Дмитрий Олегович -доктор филологических наук, профессор, главный науч-ный сотрудник, Институт русского языка им. В. В. Виноградова Российской академии наук,

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One of the questions in idiom research is the extent to which the image component of a figurative idiom fixed in its inner form reaches into its lexicalized meaning and consequently its pragmatics. This paper explores two hypotheses: that traces of the image component of idiom semantics can have an effect on the usage of the given idiom, and that, in certain cases, its etymology (as a contributor to its imagery) can thus influence an idiom's usage conditions.To test these hypotheses we will use data drawn from large text corpora. Keywords: idiom motivation; etymology of idioms; image component; intertextuality; usage restrictions. Preliminary remarks, aims and key questionsIn this paper we will discuss some of the problems of idiom motivation with regard to its relationship with etymology. 1 As is well-known, the synchronic motivation of an idiom often does not coincide with the "true" etymology of that idiom, and sometimes the two can contradict each other. In such cases, the question arises whether it is the synchronic motivation or the etymology that is more important for the functioning of an idiom. This involves examining the external combinatorial restrictions of a given idiom. For any idiom this then becomes the question of whether any such restrictions can be explained by addressing the idiom's conceptual basis. If so, what are the motivational "bridges"? These could involve how most speakers intuitively construct such bridges (which often takes the form of folk etymology), or it could involve the true etymology of the idiom. Both possibilities are plausible, the latter on the assumption that an idiom's figurative past may be accessible in the present in Brought to you by | Stockholms Universitet Authenticated Download Date | 7/6/15 7:56 PM 74 Dmitrij Dobrovol'skij and Elisabeth Piirainen the form of traces of an "etymological memory" so that even where speakers do not know the etymology, the idiom is not used in combinatorial surroundings that would violate a historically relevant type of context. The former possibility predicts that speakers use idioms according to the idiom's personal associations for the speaker, which need not have anything in common with the idiom's true etymology.Let us make these proposals more specific. Psycholinguistic and cognitivesemantic research suggests that speakers, when processing an idiom, map the conceptual domain evoked by the idiom's lexical structure (source) onto another conceptual domain (target) that underlies that idiom's lexicalized meaning. The target concept can then be structured according to the structure of the source concept, so that the source can influence the lexicalized meaning (cf. examples in Lakoff 1990). These are more or less plausible hypotheses about the ways in which motivation can influence the processing of an idiom. It may be that, consequently, such processing can also influence an idiom's use. The usage of idioms and its relationship to idiom processing can be investigated on the basis of empirical data drawn from sufficiently large text...