Talk:Set phrase

ˡ

What is this weird looking square supposed to denote? <KF> 14:58, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Probably stress, it would probably be rendered correctly with the right font, I think it's IPA. 惑乱 分からん 18:22, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Constructions

Well, I certainly trust linguistics specialists to get this right, but it seems to me I've always seen the term "set phrase" used to refer to constructions that included verbs. Most of the examples here are simply compound nouns.

I apologize that I'm no linguistics expert myself, so I can't speak to English examples. But we often use the term "set phrase" in Japanese class to refer to constructions that always go together - verb, noun, and particle - to produce a set meaning.

For example: Ki (気) can be used in various set phrases to produce set meanings that don't directly relate to the meaning of the words involved.

• Ki ni naru - to be worrying, to be weighing on one's mind
• Ki wo tsukeru - to notice
• Ki wo tsuku - to be careful

Yet, as these are quite normal everyday phrases, and not metaphors like "pulling your leg", they're not really idioms. Again, I apologize that as a native English speaker, I have trouble applying these sorts of linguistics concepts to my own language, and can only provide foreign examples. Thoughts? LordAmeth 18:44, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Clean-up

It's been quite some time since I posted the above comment, and while I've had a very brief conversation with one editor over at WP:Theoretical Linguistics, nothing has come out of it towards actually changing the article. So, here's hoping that some cleanup tags will attract attention.

I'm no linguist, and do not trust myself to be able to accurately represent what this technical jargon term means precisely within the Linguistics context. But I do know just enough to know that set phrases consist of far more than just compound nouns. Egfrank offered the wonderful example of "to put up with" - a phrase made up of several words, with a new meaning not intrinsic to any one of the parts. This is a far better example of a set phrase than simply a noun which has been modified.

Please, won't someone help this poor, misguided, article!? LordAmeth (talk) 00:27, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

"to put up with" is a phrasal verb, not a set phrase. A set phrase is immutable in it's form and meaning. Many of the examples are awful.Irbisgreif (talk) 10:12, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

The article needs to define how "set phrases" differ from "institutional utterances", from "idioms", from "lexical units", "phrasal verbs", "collocations", and so on. User:Linas 22:42, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

(Teacher's) Tone

The introduction reads decently at first, but continues to have more of a socratic tone. This really isn't good for an encyclopedia article. Rather than trying to present this as a teacher might, editors should aim for simple clarity. Compare the linked article markedness. Examples are fine, but questions to the reader to be avoided. Ace Class Shadow; My talk. 03:24, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I have edited the article per your suggestions; is this enough to resolve the WP:TONE issue? NoDepositNoReturn (talk) 22:28, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Beyond repair

I suggest that this article be simply deleted. For three reasons: Firstly I suggest that the title "set phrase" is not a name for a _topic_, certainly not a wellknown name of a notable topic _in linguistics_. Secondly I think the article's quality is quite inadequate. Thirdly, the combination of non-topic-like title plus content makes the whole more like a dictionary entry (explaining the English term "set phrase") than an entry in an encyclopedia. (Wikipedia is not a dictionary.)

A suitable replacement title might be "(linguistic) idiom" or "idiomaticity", a topic that has been discussed in proper linguistics publications and whose title would match the terminology used in such papers. User:CecilWard.

Listed meaning of "Don't look now" is quite different in American English

I can find no references, but I feel that I must point out that your definition of the set-phrase "Don't look now" might confuse those trying to learn American English. I have heard the set-phrase "Don't look now" carry the meaning of a request, to refrain from visibly reacting to news, of any kind, good or bad, significant or trivial. For example, "Please, do not react with any body language or other signals that might give away that I know something that others do not yet know. So... brace yourself, for I am about to tell you of that news..." Does that make sense? It is possible to use this set-phrase to "warn someone about an imminent misfortune", but that I rarely encountered. In my experience, this set-phrase was most often used to request that one's audience (of one or more people) to not visibly react to any news, good or bad, in order to prevent others, outside of one's clique, from becoming suspicious.