Maleki, S., Rasekhmahand, M. (2023). Flexibility in Persian Idiomatic Expressions: The case of "Hand-Idioms". , 15(1), 95-124. doi: 10.22067/jlkd.2023.79929.1136
Sasan Maleki; Mohammad Rasekhmahand. "Flexibility in Persian Idiomatic Expressions: The case of "Hand-Idioms"". , 15, 1, 2023, 95-124. doi: 10.22067/jlkd.2023.79929.1136
Maleki, S., Rasekhmahand, M. (2023). 'Flexibility in Persian Idiomatic Expressions: The case of "Hand-Idioms"', , 15(1), pp. 95-124. doi: 10.22067/jlkd.2023.79929.1136
Maleki, S., Rasekhmahand, M. Flexibility in Persian Idiomatic Expressions: The case of "Hand-Idioms". , 2023; 15(1): 95-124. doi: 10.22067/jlkd.2023.79929.1136
Flexibility in Persian Idiomatic Expressions: The case of "Hand-Idioms"
1Assistant Professor of Linguistics, Department of English Language and Literature, Malayer University, Malayer, Iran
2Professor of Linguistics, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Bu-Ali Sina University of Hamedan, Hamedan, Iran
Abstract
Flexibility in idioms may occur at different lexical, morpho-syntactic and syntactic levels. In flexible idioms, the core meaning remains unchanged. This descriptive-analytical study aims to investigate flexibility in Persian Idioms at the above-mentioned levels. The corpus contains 427 examples containing 160 "Hand-Idioms" in Najafi (1387/2008). The findings show that lexical flexibility occurs through the process of addition (nouns, adjectives, adverbs, quantifiers) and substitution (verbs and prepositions); morpho-syntactic flexibility happens through the addition of the plural marker "-ha" and the indefinite marker "–ya", and the syntactic flexibility happens through "postposing", "scrambling", "causative and intransitive structures", "objects substitution" and the addition of the "complements". Furthermore, it was found that Persian "Hand-Idioms" are more inclined towards "addition" and factors such as "definiteness", "information structure", "linguistic economy", "specification" and "expression of quantity" cause the motivation for the flexibility of the idioms. The findings of this research can be used by the writers of the textbooks on teaching Persian idioms to non-Persian speakers and the relevant teachers to provide the learners with appropriate examples to show the features of the flexible idioms.
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