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.
Abstract This study seeks to deal academically with how the EU treats clandestine immigration, through adopting a purley security approach, based on the European understanding of security threats posed to the security of communities and States in EU at all levels. So they agreed upon criminalizing this threat within the bloc while using repressive tools and steps to limit illegal immigrants flow to European territories. Accordingly, the EU gave the phenomen a security character. So it takes it from low politics level , that of employment and economic field to that of high politics, as a new security problem lying within a new security language embraced by ruling European elites, in other words EU touched on this issue as a speech act emp
... Show MoreThe research addressed an analytical field investigation of the locality of meander, the factors responsible of the locality of the meander at certain points of the stream other than others, and the role sequence of these factors in the formation process.
The research revealed that the location of forming the meander was associated closely with the scale structural composition of the bank materials from which the first stage of forming the curved stream, for the inhomogeneous or non-identical opposite banks in their scale structural composition saw an activity of differential corrosion, while the homogeneous and identical opposite banks in their scale structural composition saw an identical corrosion activity in its intensity at both
mixtures of cyclohexane + n-decane and cyclohexane + 1-pentanol have been measured at 298.15, 308.15, 318.15, and 328.15 K over the whole mole fraction range. From these results, excess molar volumes, VE , have been calculated and fitted to the Flory equations. The VE values are negative and positive over the whole mole fraction range and at all temperatures. The excess refractive indices nE and excess viscosities ?E have been calculated from experimental refractive indices and viscosity measurements at different temperature and fitted to the mixing rules equations and Heric – Coursey equation respectively to predict theoretical refractive indices, we found good agreement between them for binary mixtures in this study. The variation of th
... Show MoreBackground: Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is the most prevalent malignant neoplasm of the oral cavity that exhibits certain histological variations. Verrucous carcinoma (VC) is an uncommon exophytic low-grade well-differentiated variant of SCC. Cellular differentiation and morphology play important roles in cell functions and maintenance of structural integrity .As the cancer is a malignant process in which disorder of the cell growth and behavior occurs, such changes may differ in different tumor types and within different grades of the same tumor. Materials and Methods:Forty two formalin – fixed, paraffin – embedded tissue blocks were included in this study (30 blocks were diagnosed as OSCC and 12 blocks were diagnosed as OV
... Show MoreA comparative study was carried out on ecological and genetical adaptation of three Iraqi
freshwater snails, Physa acuta, Melanopsis buccinoidea and Melanoides tuberculata, in
respect to acute toxicity of heavy metals (Zn, Cd and Hg). Longevity are used as poisoning
tolerance criterion. LT 50 and LT 100 were determined for the studied snails at (0.5, 1, 5, and
10 ppm), for the three metals. Results indicated that Physa acuta had a higher tolerance than
Melanopsis buccinoidea and Melanoides tuberculata, which was the lower one. Previous
exposure to heavy metals in the original habitat was affecting on experimental tolerance and
no relationships of physical and chemical factors (total hardness, temperature, D. O. and
A novel Schiff base (SB) ligand, abbreviated as HDMPM, resulted from the condensation of 2-amino-4-phenyl-5-methyl thiazole and 4-(diethylamino)salicyaldehyde, and its metal complexes with [Co(II), Cu(II), Ni(II), and Zn(II)] ions in high yield were formed. The physico-chemical techniques such as elemental analysis, molar conductance, IR, 1H and 13C NMR, mass spectroscopy, and electronic absorption studies were utilized to characterize the synthesized compounds. The studied compounds were examined for their possible anticancer activity against a number of human cancerous cell lines, including A549 lung carcinoma, HepG2 liver cancer, HCT116 colorectal cancer, and MCF-7 breast cancer cell lines, with doxorubicin serving as the standard. The s
... Show MoreAmino acids were analyzed in stomach regions of males & females of Felis catus (Domestic Cat) & Sciurus carolinesis (Eastern Gray Squirrel ), where it was stated that there are (18) amino acids as following : Aspartic acid (Asp), Glutamic acid (Gla), Serine (Ser), Arginine (Arg), Aspargine ( Asn), Cysteine (Cys), Alanine (Ala), Proline (Pro), Glyscine (Gly), Threonine (Thr), Tyrosine (Tyr), Valine (Val), Methionine (Met), Histidine ( His), Isoleucine (ile), Leucine (leu), Phenylalanine (Phe ) and Lysine (lys). Results have shown there are significant differences in concentration of amino acids between different region of stomach between males & females of Felis catus in part and between males & females of Sciurus carolinesis (Eastern Gray S
... Show MoreIncreasing demands on producing environmentally friendly products are becoming a driving force for designing highly active catalysts. Thus, surfaces that efficiently catalyse the nitrogen reduction reactions are greatly sought in moderating air-pollutant emissions. This contribution aims to computationally investigate the hydrodenitrogenation (HDN) networks of pyridine over the γ-Mo2N(111) surface using a density functional theory (DFT) approach. Various adsorption configurations have been considered for the molecularly adsorbed pyridine. Findings indicate that pyridine can be adsorbed via side-on and end-on modes in six geometries in which one adsorption site is revealed to have the lowest adsorption energy (
... Show MoreIn this research, the Williamson-Hall method and of size-strain plot method was employed to analyze X- ray lines for evaluating the crystallite size and lattice strain and of cadmium oxide nanoparticles. the crystallite size value is (15.2 nm) and (93.1 nm) and lattice strain (4.2 x10−4 ) and (21x10−4) respectively. Also, other methods have been employed to evaluate the crystallite size. The current methods are (Sherrer and modified Sherrer methods ) and their results are (14.8 nm) and (13.9nm) respectively. Each method of analysis has a different result because the alteration in the crystallite size and lattice strain calculated according to the Williamson-Hall and size-strain plot methods shows that the non-uniform strain in nan
... Show MoreBackground: Tooth wear is one of the most common problems in the older dentate population which results from the interaction of three processes (attrition, abrasion and erosion) and it affects all societies, different age groups, and all cultures. This study was achieved to evaluate the prevalence and distribution of tooth wear among institutionalized residents in Baghdad city\ Iraq. Subjects and Methods: This survey was accomplished on four private and one governmental institution in Baghdad city. One-hundred twenty three (61 males, 62 females) aged 50-89 years were participated in this study. The diagnosis and recording of tooth wear were according to criteria of Smith and Knight. Results: The prevalence of tooth wear was 100% with a mean
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