Pour un traitement fonctionnel des expressions idiomatiques
For an Operational Processing of Idioms

Summary/Abstract: This article sets to account for two little explored phenomena in the functional framework and in linguistics more generally: lexicalization and idioms, where the former is an instance of the latter.The examination of lexicalization by the Markedness Shift Principle proposed by Dik (1978, 1980) was carried out in three stages : (a) the derivation of metaphorical expressions, (b) the lexicalization of metaphors, and (c) the de-idiomatization of idioms. In the first stage, we noticed that the bi-modular analysis accounting for the literal and metaphorical sense of idioms, is no longer possible in the context of Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) framework (Hengeveld &Mackenzie (2008) that does not consider a Logic Module (Dik, 1989). For the second stage, we established idioms classification based on their degree of idiomacy by using two approaches: (1) a psycho-logic approach which results in a Accessibility Hierarchy to Lexicalization based on the dichotomy between proximal idiomatic expressions (non-decomposable) and distal idiomatic expressions (decomposable) and (2) a formal approach which results in a tripartite typology of idioms through revision, extension and application (into Arabic and French) of criteria proposed by Keizer (2016) in a compositional perspective. In the third stage, through a compositional perspective, we proposed a re-reading of expressions called ‘hybrids’ which lead to an analysis of this type of constructions as part of a category of motivated idioms that are not decomposable, and allow for certain changes. Finally, we accounted for the idioms phenomenon in the FDG framework (Hengeveld & Mackenzie, 2008 and 2011). The representation of idioms from typologically different languages (English, French and Arabic) and their unification confirm the typological adequacy of the theoretical assumptions of the functional model.

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