Reacción entre TATU 3 y 2-naftol

I want to consider one further frame: binomials, which I am using as a general term to refer to dyads or conjoined pairs, unrestricted as to wordclass, but normally occurring in fixed order as 'irreversible binomials' ( Malkiel 1959; Makkai 1972). Compare the 'paired parallel phrases', mentioned by Fillmoreet

al. ( 1988: 507 footnote), for example cold hands, warm hearts and garbage in, garbage out. See Lambrecht ( 1984) for a discussion of binomials in general

and German binomials in particular.

Table 6.4 shows the commonest realizations in OHPC of the pattern WORD1 and WORD2. Of these pairings, up and down, in and

TABLE 6.4. Commonest binomial structures in OHPC

334 Trade and Industry

165 England and Wales

132 economic and_monetary

112 Poland and Hungary

111 East and West

110 men and women

93 up and down

80 political and economic

70 black and white -152-

out, and black and white are lexicalized as idiomatic units, irreversible although

they also have literal meanings. These patterns show up some interesting points. Some purely compositional binomials are not irreversible but still demonstrate clear tendencies for preferred ordering: for instance, Poland and

Hungary is five times as common as Hungary and Poland in OHPC (less

dramatically so in BofE). It is possible to hypothesize rules or at least crude principles from these tendencies: see the discussion by Malkiel ( 1959). The first item is typically the one considered more positive or dominant, or logically prior; in some cases, it is the item considered 'nearer to home' or 'nearer speaker's viewpoint'. Lakoff and Johnson characterize this as the 'me-first' orientation ( 1980: 132 f.). However, Carter and McCarthy point out that such ordering is languagespecific and culture-specific ( 1988: 25 ): for example, English come and go contrasts with French aller et venir. Examples, not limited to FEIs, include:

profit and loss home and abroad in and out

here and there life and death cause and effect men and women women and children British and French French and Italian

Other pairings suggest a tendency for the shorter or monosyllabic item to precede:

law and order bed and breakfast time and money fruit and vegetables names and addresses

banks and building societies

The norm for pairs involving male/female counterparts is for the male term to precede: hence Mr and Mrs, men and women, brothers and sisters. There are a few exceptions such as mother and father/ mothers and fathers, where the female-first ordering outnumbers the male-first by around 3:1 in BofE.

However, Murray Knowles points out (personal communication) that according to his corpus data, collected for a contrastive study of nineteenth- and

twentiethcentury children's literature, father(s) and mother(s) seems to have been the norm in the late nineteenth century, in contrast

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to mother(s) and father(s)in the late twentieth. This reflects a diachronic shift in the paradigm, and reinforces the fact that cultural influences underlie

Lexicalized FEIs realizing the frame usually observe the rules: born and bred

comings and goings cut and dried

dim and distant drunk and disorderly free and easy

nook and cranny

part and parcel of SOMETHING pure and simple

tar and feather to and fro

Rare counter-examples amongst FEIs include black and white (negative first), and risk life and limb (illogical order of the severity of the risk). Back and forth,

backwards and forwards are indeterminate, but seem to observe the 'me-first'

or 'towards speaker' orientation. John Sinclair (personal communication) points out that many antonymic binomials, or conjoined antonyms, have a meaning along the lines of 'everything' or 'no matter what'. This can be seen in pairs, not always linked with and, with conjoined temporals,

from cradle to grave beginning to end

day and night, night and day spatials and directionals,

head to foot

left and right; left, right, and centre search high and low

swear up and down (literally spatial) top to toe, top to bottom

up hill and down dale and other contrastives:

by fair means or foul come rain or shine flotsam and jetsam

Through thick and thin is synchronically antonymous but diachronically spatial

and tautologous (through thicket and thin wood): it implies universality, as does the trinomial here, there, and everywhere.

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Some conjoined antonyms imply repetition: note that the conjoined words all have dynamic meanings:

back and forth come and go in and out on and off push and pull stop and start

Blow hot and cold implies contradiction as well as repetition; give and take

implies reciprocity in compromise. Dos and don'ts, ins and outs, the long and

the short of it, and this and that have metalinguistic reference and signal a lack

substitute for detailed rehearsal of those details).Other conjoined pairs imply strong contrast: they are set up as antonymous in the FEI context:

(be) apples and oranges (be) chalk and cheese (be) oil and water

Pairs linked with or provide more obvious contrasted alternatives: feast or famine

fight or flight fish or cut bait sink or swim trick or treat

Give or take and hit or/and miss both signal or denote approximation.Linked

synonyms--and cases where the same word occurs twice--are tautologous and therefore inevitably have an emphatic function or emphasis as part of their meaning: so with many linked co-hyponyms. Compare also the emphatic trinomials every Tom, Dick, or Harry and lock, stock, and barrel:

alive and kicking/well bits and pieces

done and dusted down and dirty down and out far and away

go at it hammer and tongs high and dry

home and dry/hosed in leaps and bounds loud and clear

nooks and crannies

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on the up and up out and out

Belt and braces is similar, but implies superfluity. In the following set, one of

the binomial elements is obsolete or old-fashioned, but a synonym or co-hyponym in diachronic terms:

at SOMEONE's beck and call bib and tucker

bill and coo bow and scrape kith and kin rack and ruin spic(k) and span whys and wherefores

Compare straight and narrow where straight was originally strait and therefore synonymous with narrow.