Parseme MWE Template: General Comments

General Principles

• Naturally occurring examples are given preference to created examples.
• Examples are marked as to whether they are created or natural.
• Basis of the classification: Sag et al. 2002 and Baldwin and Kim 2010:
  • Fixed MWEs: no flexibility allowed whatsoever.
  • Semi-fixed MWEs: only meaningless, obligatory variation allowed.
  • Flexible MWEs: variation allowed that indicates that part of the MWE should be assigned meaning.
• For each MWE, for each constituent inside this MWE: apply tests for its degree of flexibility
• Criteria to determine the size of a MWE:
  • lexically obligatory material is included
  • for predicative MWEs: if compatible with all/most predicative constructions (including verbless constructions such as small clauses, absolute with-construction, ...), then no verb is included, but the MWE is marked for predicativeness
  • for negative polarity-MWEs: if the negation in not part of the MWE as a fixed lexical element, the negative marker is not lexically included in the MWE, but its NPI-hood is marked (ideally as strong or weak)
  • for cases where a the variation is less abstract but nonetheless covers all elements of a lexical semantic class, this class should be named together with its most salient representatives (keep/start/get/have/set/... the ball rolling, Nunberg et al. 1994, p. 504).
  • for cases where the variation is restricted to a small arbitrary number of lexical items, these should be listed (lose one's mind/marbles, drop a bomb/bombshell/brick, Nunberg et al. 1994, p. 504).

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