"Money" idioms in English pecuniary space

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"Money" idioms in English pecuniary space

Mykhaylenko V.V., Doctor of Philology, Professor, Department of Translation: Theory and Practice & Foreign Languages Institute of International Relations and Social Studies, Interregional Academy of Personnel Management

Summary. The present paper is a semantic study of pecuniary idioms expressed by the Noun Phrase with the lexeme money as a headword in professional and non-professional types of discourse. The dynamic semantics of the main lexemes pecuniary, money and fee have been investigated to understand the structure of idioms and developing their common meaning. About one hundred idioms were selected to compile a corpus for its further linguistic investigation. Three assumptions are suggested in the paper and scrupulously verified. The investigation of verbalizing the concept of “money” has revealed common features of the pecuniary system in Global English and differential features in National Variants of English.

Key words: idiom, semantics, structure, pragmatics, discourse, conceptual system.

Ìèõàéëåíêî Â. Â. ²ä³îìè ç ãîëîâíèì ñêëàäíèêîì «money» â àíãë³éñüêîìó ãðîøîâîìó ïðîñòîð³

Àíîòàö³ÿ. Ñòàòòÿ ïðèñâÿ÷åíà äîñë³äæåííþ ñåìàíòèêè ãðîøîâèõ ³ä³îì, âèðàæåíèõ íîì³íàòèâíîþ ôðàçîþ ç ëåêñåìîþ «money» ÿê ãîëîâíîþ ñêëàäîâîþ ÷àñòèíîþ ó ïðîôåñ³éíîìó òà íåïðîôåñ³éíîìó òèïàõ äèñêóðñó. Âèâ÷åíî äèíàì³÷íó ñåìàíòèêó îñíîâíèõ ëåêñåì íà ïîçíà÷åííÿ «ãðîø³» äëÿ âèð³çíåííÿ ñòðóêòóðè çíà÷åííÿ çàçíà÷åíèõ ³ä³îì. ijáðàíî áëèçüêî 100 ³ä³îì äëÿ ôîðìóâàííÿ êîðïóñó òà éîãî ïîäàëüøîãî àíàë³çó. Ó ðîáîò³ çðîáëåíî òðè ïðèïóùåííÿ ùîäî ôîðìóâàííÿ ïðîôåñ³îíàëüíî¿ òà íåïðîôåñ³îíàëüíî¿ êîíöåïòîñôåð. Âèâ÷åííÿ âåðáàë³- çàö³¿ êîíöåïòó «money» çà äîïîìîãîþ â³äïîâ³äíèõ ³ä³îì âèîêðåìèëî çàãàëüí³ ðèñè ãðîøîâî¿ ñèñòåìè ó ãëîáàëüí³é àíãë³éñüê³é ìîâ³ òà ¿¿ â³äì³íí³ îçíàêè â íàö³îíàëüíèõ âàð³àíòàõ àíãë³éñüêî¿ ìîâè.

Êëþ÷îâ³ ñëîâà: ³ä³îìà, ñòðóêòóðà, ñåìàíòèêà, ïðàãìàòèêà, äèñêóðñ, êîíöåïòîñôåðà.

Ìèõàéëåíêî Â. Â. Èäèîìû ñ ÿäåðíèì êîìïîíåíòîì «money» â àíãëèéñêîì äåíåæíîì ïðîñòðàíñòâå

Àííîòàöèÿ. Ñòàòüÿ ïîñâÿùåíà èññëåäîâàíèþ ñåìàíòèêè äåíåæíûõ èäèîì, âûðàæåííûõ íîìèíàòèâíîé ôðàçîé ñ ëåêñåìîé «money» êàê ÿäåðíûì êîìïîíåíòîì â ïðîôåññèîíàëüíîì è íåïðîôåññèîíàëüíîì òèïàõ äèñêóðñà. Èçó÷åíî äèíàìè÷åñêóþ ñåìàíòèêó îñíîâíûõ ëåêñåì, êîòîðûå îáîçíà÷àþò «money», äëÿ âûäåëåíèÿ ñòðóêòóðû çíà÷åíèÿ óêàçàííûõ èäèîì. Îòîáðàíû îêîëî 100 èäèîì äëÿ ôîðìèðîâàíèÿ êîðïóñà è åãî ïîñëåäóþùåãî àíàëèçà.  ðàáîòå âûñêàçàíû òðè ïðåäïîëîæåíèÿ î ôîðìèðîâàíèè ïðîôåññèîíàëüíîé è íå ïðîôåññèîíàëüíîé êîíöåïòîñôåð ñ ïîìîùüþ èäèîì. Áëàãîäàðÿ èçó÷åíèþ âåðáàëèçàöèè êîíöåïòà «money» ñîîòâåòñòâóþùèìè èäèîìàìè âûäåëåíû îáùèå ÷åðòû äåíåæíîé ñèñòåìû â ãëîáàëüíîì àíãëèéñêîì ÿçûêå è åå îòëè÷èòåëüíûå ïðèçíàêè â íàöèîíàëüíûõ âàðèàíòàõ àíãëèéñêîãî ÿçûêà.

Êëþ÷åâûå ñëîâà: èäèîìà, ñòðóêòóðà, ñåìàíòèêà, ïðàãìàòèêà, äèñêóðñ, êîíöåïòîñôåðà.

Prelimenaries. In European idioms studies set phrases are conventional multiword expressions or in Mona Baker's terms “frozen patterns of language which allow little or variation in form and the meaning which is not a sum of its constituents meaning” [4, p. 63-68]. They are set by definition; as soon as expressions have become conventionalized and reproduced in discourse as prefabricated units of language, i.e. phrasal lexical items are multiword units of the lexicon, and as such like all lexical units, are relatively stable in form and meaning.

There is a long tradition of classifying phrasal lexical items into classes such as: restricted collocations, phrasal verbs, idioms, proverbs, or speech formulae [see also 2, p. 171-188]. Though, Beatrice Warren admits that “it should perhaps be pointed out that we must distinguish between the study of idiomaticity and the study of idioms. Idioms in the sense of “opaque invariant word combinations” have been studied by theoretical linguists quite extensively, but these bon a fide idioms do not contribute to the idiomaticity of a text in any important way. Presence of such idioms in a text does not necessarily make it idiomatic; nor does their absence make it unidiomatic” [16, p. 35].

In the focus of the etymological, semantic and functional types of the linguistic analysis there are two lexemes which later could model (1) a conceptual system of the scientific worldview and (2) a conceptual system of the naïve worldview:

(1) The lexeme pecuniary came to English in 1500, from Latin pecuniarius “pertaining to money,” from pecunia “money, property, wealth,” from pecu “cattle, flock,” from PIE root *peku- “wealth, movable property, livestock” (source of Sanskrit pasu- “cattle,” Gothic faihu “money, fortune,” Old English feoh “cattle, money”). It is known that livestock was the measure of wealth in the ancient world, and Rome, like any other culture, was essentially a farmer's community. For a possible parallel sense development in Old English, see fee, and compare, evolving in the other direction, cattle. [10].

(2) The lexeme money mid-13c., “coinage, metal currency,” borrowed from Old French monoie “money, coin, currency; change” which originates from Latin moneta “place for coining money, mint; coined money, money, coinage,” from Moneta, a title or surname of the Roman goddess Juno, in or near whose temple money was coined; perhaps from monere “advise, warn” with the sense of “admonishing goddess,” which is sensible, but the etymology is difficult. In early 19-th c. the meaning extended to include paper money. To make money “earn pay” is first attested mid-15c. Highwayman's threat “your money or your life” first attested in 1841. The phrase in the money (1902) originally meant “one who finishes among the prize-winners” (in a horse race, etc.) [10]. The challenge to put (one S) money where (one S) mouth is is first recorded in 1942 (American English); money-grub “one who is sordidly intent on amassing money” is from 1768. The image of money burning a hole in someone's pocket is attested from 1520s.

The referred lexemes appeared in the English language where the Old English lexeme feoh “livestock, cattle; movable property; possessions in livestock, goods, or money; riches, treasure, wealth; money as a medium of exchange or payment.” Was functioning in varios spheres of life. Originally it came from Proto-Germanic *fehu (a source also of Old Saxon fehu, Old High German fihu, German Vieh “cattle,” Gothic faihu “money, fortune”). This is from PIE *peku- “cattle” (source also of Sanskrit pasu, Latin pecu “cattle,” pecunia “money, property”).

The other word fee is Anglo-French from Old Frenchfieu, a variant of fief “possession, holding, domain; feudal duties, payment” (see fief), which apparently is a Germanic compound in which the first element is cognate with the Old English feoh. Evidently, Middle English, representing the merger or mutual influence of two words, one from Old English, and one from an Old French form of the same Germanic word, and both ultimately from a PIE root meaning “cattle.” Via Anglo-French came the legal senses “estate in land or tenements held on condition of feudal homage; land, property, possession” (c. 1300). Hence fee-simple (late 14 c.) “absolute ownership,” as opposed to fee-tail (early 15 c.) “entailed ownership,” inheritance limited to some particular class of heirs (second element from Old French taillir “to cut, to limit”). The feudal sense was extended from landholdings to inheritable offices of service to a feudal lord (late 14 c.; in Anglo-French late 13 c.). From late 14 c. as “a sum paid for a privilege” (originally admission to a guild); in early 15 c. as “money payment or charge exacted for a license, etc.” [10].

Three assumptions which validity will be further investigated are suggested:

Assumption 1: The lexeme pecuniary as a dominant of the financial conceptual system models the professional (financial) worldview.

Assumption 2: The lexeme money as a dominant of the financial conceptual system models the naïve (non-professional) worldview.

Assumption 3: The lexeme money as a dominant of the financial conceptual system models the both types of worldview.

Discussion. A crucial value of idioms is their semantic irregularity (or idiomaticity) which is closely related to the property of figurativeness. Furthermore, it is generally agreed upon that idioms, for the most part, are not frozen elements of a language and that they usually are not arbitrary either, but clearly motivated by structures of knowledge [6].

The present paper is focused on the idioms representing the pecuniary conceptual space in the Anglo-phone worldview - British English, American English, Canadian English, Australian English and New Zealandish in particular. The main topics of the research have been idiom semantics, idiom pragmatics, and idiom structure. This research can convincingly demonstrate the fruitfulness of cognitive linguistics as a paradigm for the elucidation of the idiom lexical-grammatical and semantic structure of English in its socio-cultural context.

It is necessary from the outset to point out, says Gabriella Kovacs, that a definitional analysis of idioms is really a controversial task due to their complex semantic structure [7, p. 87]. An idiom is a concatenation of more than one lexeme whose meaning is not derived from the meanings of its constituents and in Mona Baker's opinion which does not consist of a verb plus adverbial particle or preposition [3, p. 79]. However, G. Brenner gives a broader view on the idiom as two or three words together that, as a unit, have a special meaning that is different from the literal meaning of the words separately [5, p. 4-5]. Most researchers stress the common meaning of all idiom constituents: it can also be defined as a set phrase, semantically opaque whose meaning cannot be detached from the meanings of its constituents. According to Phillip Srazny the idiom behaves as a single semantic unit [13, p. 454]. Katie Wales writes that “in linguistics idioms usually denote phrases or strings of words which are idiosyncratic (idiomatic) in that they are language-specific, not easily translated into another language and in that their meaning is not easily determined from the meanings of their constitutive parts” [15, p. 198]. We must admit that the denotation of the dominant constituent of the idiom like money relates the unit, first, to the pecuniary conceptual system, second, its connotation relates the unit to the conceptual system of wealth and, third, it relates its discourse to the conceptual system of property status. Zoltan Kovecses and Péter Szabco distinguish among three aspects of idiomatic meaning: first, the general meaning of idioms appears to be determined by the particular “source domains” that apply to a particular target domain; second, more specific aspects of idiomatic meaning are provided by the “ontological mapping” that applies to a given idiomatic expression and, third, connotative aspects of idiomatic meaning can be accounted for by “epistemic correspondences” [8, p. 326-327]. As for the first aspect we share the thesis that “the general meaning of idioms appears to be determined by the particular “source domains” that apply to a particular target domain, however, likewise the meaning of idioms defines the semantic domain of the discourse.

Investigation

P. Kvetko differentiates the following distinctive features of idioms:

(1) lexical complexity and semantic simplicity the meaning of an idiom is not derivable from the meanings of its individual parts, for instance: money to burn;

(2) fixed form or invariability - for instance, money talks which means that “people can convey many messages with money, and many things can be discovered about people by observing the way they use their money” - the number of variants (if there are any) is limited, for instance, idioms with money as a head word of the nominal phrases represent a semantic unity with a pragmatic component - legal : illegal, large : small, honest : dishonest, state : private, borrowed : donated, earned : granted, etc. The sentence-like proverbs with the lexeme money as the subject are quite popular in fiction and colloquial styles, for instance: money is the root of all evil, a fool and his money are soon parted, put your money where your mouth is, money talks, money can't buy love, money doesn't grow on trees, money burns a hole in pocket, lend your money and lose your friend, if you pay peanuts, you only get monkeys, etc. [17]. In the given illustration the lexeme money is used in its figurative meaning.

(3) figurativeness, for instance, money to burn; make money hand over fist; or money talks [9, p. 14-15, see also14, p. 63-65; 17].

The lexeme “money” is the dominant one in the given idioms as well as in other 78 idioms of our corpus. The object of the research is the idiom represented y a nominal phrase (NP) with the lexeme “money” as a head word which actualizes the following semantic components under the influence of the speaker's intent, combinabil- ity with constituent in the preposition and the discourse register - non-professional : professional:

a current medium of exchange in the form of coins and banknotes;

coins and banknotes collectively: (moneys or monies) formal sums of money: a statement of all moneys paid into and out of the account;

the assets, property, and resources owned by someone or something; wealth: the college is very short of money;

financial gain: the main aim of a commercial organization is to make money;

payment for work; wages: she accepted the job at the bank since the money was better).

The Investopedia defines money as a financial instrument: “Money is an officially issued legal tender that typically consists of notes and coins.” Money is the circulating medium of exchange as defined by a government”. The everyday use employs the names of coins or banknotes or their metaphorical equivalents, especially in a non-professional discourse and slang, for instance, in the USA one can hear: benjamins “one-hundred-dollar bills (due to the portrait of Benjamin Franklin on the bills); bill “a single piece of paper money”; bones “dollars”; bucks “dollars”; cabbage “paper money”; cash “paper money”; cheddar “money”; clams “dollars” (perhaps from the onetime use of seashells as currency); coin “money either paper, or coinage”; C-notes “multiples of one hundred dollars”; dough “money in general”; five-spots “five-dollar bills”; greenbacks “paper money”; G “one thousand dollars”; grand “one thousand dollars (as in “four grand” for “four thousand dollars”; lettuce “paper money”; loot “money, could mean stolen”; singles “one-dollar bills”; stacks “multiples of a thousand dollars”); ten- spot “ten-dollar bill”; two bits “twenty-five cents” (this is an antiquated term); wad “a bundle of paper money” [5].

A combinability of the head word with a prepositional adjunct, “occurring repetitively in natural functioning language, admits Jurg Strassler, is much better evidence for an underlying hegemonic discourse which is made more explicit through the word pairing than a single case” [12, p. 13].

(1) Smart money “money that is bet (= risked) or invested (= put into something inorder to make a profit) by people who know a lot about a subject.”

(2) Pin money “a small amount of extra money that a person earns to buy things that they want but do not need.”

(3) Easy money “money that is easily and sometimes dishonestly earned.”

(4) Seed money “money that is given to someone to help them start a new business or project.

(5) Caution money “a sum of money deposited as security for good conduct, against possible debts, etc.”

(6) Funny money a sum of money so large as to be considered unreal (British); money that is illegal or that is tainted by illegal activity; specif., counterfeit money (American).

(7) Fiat money is “money only has value because the government maintains that value, or because two parties agree on said value. Fiat money was first introduced as an alternative to commodity-backed money.”

(8) Fresh money “money that has not previously been invested.

(9) Blood money “money obtained at the cost of another's life.

(10) Monopoly money “money regarded as not being real or having no real value”.

(11) Black money “any money that a person or organization acquires illegally, as by a means that involves tax evasion” (British) [17]; money to fund some government project that is concealed in the cost of some other project;” income (as from a black market or from gambling) that is not reported to the government for tax purposes” (American) [5].

(12) Dark money “refers to the funds donated to nonprofit organizations that in turn spend it in order to influence elections. These nonprofit organizations can receive an unlimited amount of donations, and they're not required to disclose their donors. The opacity of this donation process often allows these companies to significantly influence the election process.”

(13) Broad money “the amount of money in a country's economy, measured by counting money kept by banks and people”; Broad money may include various deposit-based accounts that would take more than 24 hours to reach maturity and be considered accessible. These are often referred to as longer-term time deposits because their activity is restricted by a specific time requirement.

(14) Front money “the money that is needed to start a business, project, etc.”

(15) Narrow money “a measure of the amount of money available for use in a country's economy that includes cash held by the public and money in current accounts, but not money in savings accounts; narrow money is a category of money supply that includes all physical money such as coins and currency, demand deposits and other liquid assets held by the central bank.”

(16) Spending money “money that you can spend on activities you enjoy, entertainment, personal things, etc.”

(17) Wholesale money refers to the large sums of money lent by financial institutions in the money markets.

(18) Love money is “capital given to an entrepreneur by family or friends in order to begin a business venture.”

(19) Tight money “results from a shortage of money, usually when monetary policy reduces the supply of money.”

(20) Key money is “a payment made to a building owner, manager, or landlord by a potential tenant in an attempt to secure a desired tenancy. Key money can be considered a type of deposit on a housing unit such as an apartment unit.”

(21) Call money is “money loaned by a bank that must be repaid on demand.”

The lexeme money is also dominant of the semantic domain actualizing the concept of money: cash, hard cash, ready money, the means, the wherewithal, funds, capital, finances, lucre, filthy lucre, banknotes, notes, paper money, coins, change, coin, coinage, silver, copper, currency, legal tender sterling, l.s.d., dosh, brass, lolly, spondulicks, wonga, ackers, wealth, riches, fortune, affluence, assets, liquid assets, resources, substance, means, deep pockets, prosperity, pay, salary, wages, remuneration, fee, cinch, stipend (British) [17]; kale, rocks, shinplasters, roll, specie, pelf, dough, bread, loot, the ready, readies, shekels, moolah, the necessary, wad, boodle, dibs, gelt, ducats, rhino, gravy, scratch, (North American) [5]; roll, bludge, stuff, folding money, Oscar, splosh, green, tin (Australian, NZ).

Here the concept money is a constant value, whereas the constituents of the semantic domain are variable values. In reality the value of the currency unit undergoes changes due to the social-economic shifts in the country, but the value of the concept of money remains unaltered in human mind. Cf.: British Old money before 1968 - pounds, shillings and pence, there were 12 pence in a shilling and 20 shillings in a pound and 249 pence in a pound. British pre-decimal coins in the twentieth century were: farthing - quarter of an old penny (not legal tender after 1960); halfpenny - half an old penny or ha'penny; penny, three pence or three penny bit; sixpence; shilling; two shillings or florin; half crown, crown; guinea (a bill). The advantage of the system over decimal, was that it was easy to divide. You could divide a pound into: half - 120 pence; one third - 80 pence; one quarter - 60 pence; one fifth - 48 pence; one sixth 40 pence [see also 14, p. 63-65].

Jurg Strassler says that “idioms are seen as a special category of lexical items which are not only determined through their structure, but also show a specific type of behavior in language use” [12, p. 11-12]. The cognitive approach to phraseology across languages lays stress on metaphors and images as the constituent principles of set phrases, and provides interesting information about the “intriguing interplay” between universal cognitive principles, culture and phraseology. Idioms cover different discourse registers and include a stylistically wide range of vocabulary

Mona Baker (2015) discusses the various ways that discourse has been used in social and scientific research: as language above the sentence level, as language in use, as types of language use or topics, and as practices which systematically form the objects of which they speak [see her discussion of “text : non-text” 4, p. 121-122]. The fact is that an idiom is created due to metaphori- zation as a cognitive process related to human-being's subconscious activities [1, p. 634]. According to Paul Simpson, idioms have their origin in metaphors which have become fixed phrases in language. They are frequently referred to as clusters of words whose meaning can be hardly deduced from their constituent parts [11, p. 93]. And it can function in various discourse registers - fiction, newspaper, finance, etc. A cognitive study of idioms became very extensive when the theory of the language world view came to develop supported by the Corpus analysis [4, p. 180-182].

Cross-linguistic or rather cross-national variants research of idioms covers a wide range of challenging topics, from the simple comparison of idioms or metaphors in the national variants of English to their systematic contrastive study of all features of set phrases.

Conclusion. The findings of the research also indicate that the dominant lexeme money is a polysemantic unit whose components play the function of the discourse cohesion.

The corpus analysis failed to prove Assumption ¹ 1 intrinsic of the professional worldview due to the absence of the common dominant actualizer “finance” in the idioms present.

The corpus analysis found Assumption ¹ 2 incomplete because the dominant lexeme money actualizes the both types of the worldview. The corpus analysis defined the validity of Assumption ¹ 3. The investigation of verbalizing the concept of “money” has revealed common features of the pecuniary conceptual systems in Global English- dollar and differential features for every national variant of English. And it has prepared the foundation for a further cross-cultural investigation of British English, American English, Canadian English, Australian English and New Zealandish pecuniary system in their lexicons.

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