Idioms are a very important part of the English language: you are told that if you want to go far (succeed) you should pull your socks up (make a serious effort to improve your behaviour, the quality of your work, etc.) and use your grey matter (brain).1 Learning and translating idioms have always been very difficult for foreign language learners. The present paper explores some of the reasons why English idiomatic expressions are difficult to learn and translate. It is not the aim of this paper to attempt a comprehensive survey of the vast amount of material that has appeared on idioms in Adams and Kuder (1984), Alexander (1984), Dixon (1983), Kirkpatrick (2001), Langlotz (2006), McCarthy and O'Dell (2002), and Wray (2002), among others. The paper concentrates on idioms as a learning-translation problem; it makes no claim to be comprehensive or academically rigorous. Leech (1989) defines an idiom as follows: “An idiom is a group of two or more words which we have to treat as a unit in learning a language. We cannot arrive at the meaning of the idiom just by adding together the meanings of the words inside it. E.g.John and Mary usedto be hardup (='They had very little money'.)”(P.186) To be more exact, an idiom is a sequence of words which is semantically and syntactically restricted, so that they function as a single unit. From a semantic point of view, the meanings of the individual words cannot be summed to produce the meanings of the idiomatic expression as a whole. Thus, fly off the handle, which means lose one's temper, cannot be understood in terms of the meanings of fly, off, or handle. The idiom phrase hot air, which means empty or boastful talk, is neither hot nor air; with hot air we are dealing with a set phrase where the meaning cannot be suggested on the basis of the two constituent words. The idiomatic meaning of spill the beans in So who spilt the beans (=told the secret) about her affair with David? has nothing to do with beans or with spilling in its literal sense. The foreign-language learner is left trying to figure out where and how the beans were spilt. From a syntactic viewpoint, the constituent parts of an idiom often do not permit the usual variability they display in other contexts. The point to be emphasized here is this: most idioms do not lend themselves easily to manipulation by speakers and writers; they are invariable and must be learned as wholes, but concord ofnumber, person and gender in the idiom phrase is still necessary, i.e. the verbs must be put into the correct form, and pronouns must agree with their antecedents: I don't give a hoot for her opinion! 2 • She doesn't give a hoot for my opinion! etc.)║He won, but only by the skin of his teeth2• She won, but only by the skin of her teeth• Iwon, but only by the skin ofmy teeth,I had to run for the train, and caught it by the skin of myteeth, etc.║He kept pullingmy arm, throwing me off my balance 2 • She kept pulling his arm, throwing him off his balance • We kept pullingher arm, throwingher offher balance, etc.2 The present paper is divided into five parts, as follows: Part I: An Overview; PART II: Learner’s Difficulties with Idioms; PART III: Some Pedagogical recommendations and Suggestions about Idioms; Part IV: Activities to Practice Idiomatic Expressions; Part V: Summary and Conclusion.
AW Ali T, Journal of the Faculty of Medicine, 2016 - Cited by 1
This paper introduces a relationship between the independence of polynomials associated with the links of the network, and the Jacobian determinant of these polynomials. Also, it presents a way to simplify a given communication network through an algorithm that splits the network into subnets and reintegrates them into a network that is a general representation or model of the studied network. This model is also represented through a combination of polynomial equations and uses Groebner bases to reach a new simplified network equivalent to the given network, which may make studying the ability to solve the problem of network coding less expensive and much easier.
Media has become a common platform for communication as a tool of offense. English language has many insult words which are commonly used in the world of media. This study investigates the socio-pragmatic aspect of insulting in English news. It aims at identifying and analysing insult words and expressions used by news presenters. To specify the problem of the study, language has a harmful power that hurts the addressees and seriously harm their psychological well-being. The insulting words that are an element of all human languages are the source of this abusive power. The study questions sought to find out are if news presenters use insult words, which insult words, and in what social contexts. In this study, the descriptive method is use
... Show MoreThe speech act of refusals has been studied widely either alone or in relation to such areas as apology, requests, promotion, and invitation. The present study aims to investigate the strategies employed by Iraqi females in refusing marriage proposals. It attempts to explore their preferences to respond directly or indirectly in relation to their ages and educational background of the parents. The sample of the study consists of 25 participants; they are learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) at the College of Education for Women/ University of Baghdad. The data are collected by using a discourse completion task (DCT) followed by a follow up interview. The researchers used a Google form shared via emails to get responses from the p
... Show Morethe electron correlation effect for inter-shell can be described by evaluating the fermi hole and partial fermi hole for Li atom comparing with Be+ and B+2 ions
Objectives: This Paper is an attempt to evaluate the services provided by the private hospitals
and to identify the strength and weakness in
their performance The results can be utilized in stating conclusion and recommendations to improve
and activate the role of private medical sector in society .
Methodology: A questionnaire has be designed for this purpose and distributed to ( 132 ) beneficiaries
mostly from Baghdad private hospitals .
Results: The paper has come out with many important results . Among These are the following :
* these who benefit from services provided by private hospitals believe that the good performance of
such hospital is not due to the medical services alone but also to scientific aspect
The research aims to determine what a photograph intends to convey as a visual text. Photographs are not captured randomly, especially those of politicians. Each photograph carries a message, even if interpretations of that message vary from person to person. The research adopts a methodology based on semiotic analysis, applying Laurent Gervero's model to analyze a photograph of the Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi's visit to Fallujah on the anniversary of the victory over ISIS. The photographs in question constitute a visual language built upon a sequence of iconic symbols and signs. These elements coalesce to give rise to an image centered around a particular theme, one designed to convey a precise messag
... Show More
A developed model has been put for the hypothesis of capturing moons in explaining the origin of Jupiter moons, and study the change of the orbital properties of these satellites as well as the distance from the planet. Jupiter moons were divided into two types according to their physical and orbital properties, they are the moons , which are formed from the same material as the planet, so it was named the original moons ,while the moons that have been captured from the surrounding space was renamed exotic moons . And the moons of exotic origin asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt in the region which is behind Neptune, the origin of each clique of moons is an asteroid fragmented after colliding previously with another body and
... Show More
The modern textual study researched the textuality of the texts and specified for that seven well-known standards, relying in all of that on the main elements of the text (the speaker, the text, and the recipient). This study was to investigate the textuality of philology, and the jurisprudence of the science of the text.
The research aims to identify the digital repository of the University of Baghdad, explain its features, how to register, explaining the mechanism for adding and retrieving research. In addition to identifying the number of people registered in and the number of intellectual outputs stored in it. The descriptive approach and survey methods were adopted by visiting the repository's website and the websites of the University of Baghdad's formations during the period (1-6/4/2024). The theoretical framework included an explanation of the concept of the digital repository, the importance of repositories, their features, and types, with reference to models of Iraqi, Arab, and foreign university digital repositories. The practical framework of the
... Show More