The inflectional fixation of idioms: Corpus vs. Dictionaries
Abstract
The aim of this paper is firstly to present the phenomenon of inflectional fixation, that is, the suspension of one or several paradigmatic oppositions inscribed in the potential inflectional variability of the main component of an idiom; and secondly, to study the particular case of the differences in use between the simple past tense (PPS) and the present perfect tense (PPC) in Spanish verbal idioms. The information collected from phraseological dictionaries is compared with the data obtained from several text corpora. Finally, examples of diverse levels of this type of fixation are presented ranging from the free variation of some locutions, a use consistent with the peninsular standard (eg., perder el norte), to the pragmatization of idioms through the preferential use of one of the tenses contrasted, as in the so-called phraseological aorist (eg., y se acabó).
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