Fellow, IEEE Bernard Picinbono
email: bernard.picinbono@lss.supelec.fr

Ergodicity and Fourth-Order Spectral Moments

Keywords: Ergodicity, normal processes, shot noise, stationary and normal manifolds, trispectrum. I

Relationships between ergodicity and structures of fourthorder spectral moments are investigated.

In particular it is shown that second-order ergodicity of a random process is directly related to the distribution of these moments on the normal manifolds of the frequency domain. This result is illustrated by various examples.

mathematical point of view this has been known for a long time [START_REF] Sinai | On higher order spectral measures of ergodic stationary processes[END_REF], [START_REF] Shiryaev | On conditions for ergodicity of stationary processes in terms of higher order moments[END_REF]. However, these papers are written in a very abstract form, and the engineering community has considered the same problem again with a quite different approach, and especially in the case of harmonic processes [START_REF] Ferrari | High-order ergodicity of a complex harmonic process[END_REF], [START_REF] Parthasarathy | Conditions for third-order stationarity and ergodicity of a harmonic random process[END_REF]. This correspondence has an intermediary perspective: it is not especially mathematically oriented and not limited to harmonic processes.

Let x(t) be a continuous-time real and strictly stationary SP. In order to estimate its mean value m it is appropriate to use its causal time average y T (t) given by y T (t) = (1/T ) t t-T

x(θ)dθ.

(

) 1
It is said that x(t) is weakly first-order (WFO) ergodic if y T (t) tends to m in the quadratic mean sense when T tends to infinity. The characterization of this kind of ergodicity requires only the knowledge of second-order properties of x(t): This means that conditions for ergodicity can be deduced from the behavior of the correlation function

γ(τ ) = E[x(t)x(t -τ )] -m 2 ,
or from the structure of its Fourier transform Γ(f ), the power spectrum of x(t): In order to simplify the presentation we assume that this spectrum can be expressed as

Γ(f ) = Γ b (f ) + N i=1 γ i δ(f -f i ), (2)
where Γ b (f ) is nonnegative, bounded, and integrable. Physically, this means that the spectrum of x(t) contains a continuous part, with a density Γ b (f ), and a finite number of spectral lines at frequencies f i .

In this case it is known that x(t) is WFO ergodic if and only if there is no spectral line at the frequency zero [START_REF] Picinbono | Random Signals and Systems[END_REF].

It is obvious that WFO ergodicity does not imply that the time average of x(t)x(t -s) converges to the ensemble average E[x(t)x(t -s)] for any s, which characterizes weak second-order (WSO) ergodicity.

For this, it is necessary to use the correlation function of x(t)x(t -s), which is a fourth-order moment of x(t): The most general form of such a moment is

m 4 (t) = m 4 (t 1 , t 2 , t 3 , t 4 ) = E[x(t 1 )x(t 2 )x(t 3 )x(t 4 )] (3)
and we shall also extensively use its Fourier transform

M 4 (f ) = M 4 (f 1 , f 2 , f 3 , f 4 )
called fourth-order spectral moment. These functions are discussed in detail in [5, p. 236]. In particular, it is shown that if x(t) is stationary, the spectral moment M 4 (f ) is equal to zero except when f T r = 0, DRAFT January 7, 2018 where r is the vector [1, 1, 1, ..., 1] T : This allows us to write M 4 (f ) == Γ 3 (f )δ(f T r), where Γ 3 (f ) is called the moment trispectrum of x(t). Therefore, M 4 (f ) and Γ 3 (f ) contain the same information and in the following discussion it will be more convenient to use M 4 (f ) instead of Γ 3 (f ). The equation

f T r = f 1 + f 2 + f 3 + f 4 = 0
defines the stationary manifold in the frequency domain. For our discussion it is necessary to recall the definition of the normal manifolds (NM).

Suppose that x(t) is a normal SP defined by its covariance function γ(τ ) or its spectrum Γ(f ): The fourth-order moments of x(t) can be expressed in terms of γ(τ ) by a well-known formula (see [5, p. 278]). By Fourier transformation of this expression we obtain

M 4 (f ) = N Γ(f i )Γ(f k )δ(f i + f j )δ(f k + f l ). (4)
The letterN (Normal) means that this sum contains three terms defining the three normal manifolds (NM), subsets of the stationary manifold, and defined by

f i + f j = 0 ; f k + f l = 0, (5)
where the sequence [i, j, k, l] takes the three isctincts values [1, 2,

It is clear that (4) is unique up to an exchange of either f i and f j or f k and f l , due to the delta term and the symmetry of Γ(f i ). Furthermore, [START_REF] Parthasarathy | Conditions for third-order stationarity and ergodicity of a harmonic random process[END_REF] shows that on the NMs the density is not arbitrar but appears as a product of spectral densities Γ(f i )Γ(f j ).This form of density is called a normal density. This can be summarized by saying that the fourth-order spectral moment of a normal SP is uniquely distributed in the NMs with a normal density. For the following discussion it is worth pointing out that there are submanifolds of the NMs that can play a certain role.

II. CONDITIONS FOR SECOND-ORDER ERGODICITY

In order to apply the result indicated above, it is necessary to calculate the power spectrum of y(t; s) = x(t)x(t -s). For this purpose, and to simplify the discussion, let us introduce some general assumptions.

Suppose that x(t) is an SP with zero mean value and a power spectrum denoted by Γ(f ). We assume that its fourth-order spectral moment can be written as

M 4 (f ) = N A(f i , f k )δ(f i + f j )δ(f k + f l ) + B(f 1 , f 2 , f 3 )δ(f 1 + f 2 + f 3 + f 4 ). (6)
The first three terms of this expression correspond to a distribution on the NMs with density A(f i , f k )

and the last term is a distribution on the stationary manifold with density B(f ). In the normal case we have B(f

) and A(f i , f k ) = Γ(f i )Γ(f k ). It is clear that B(f )
is the contribution to the fourth-order spectral January 7, 2018 DRAFT moment that does not possesses the normal manifolds as support. The relation ( 6) is verified by all the models of SPs analyzed below. Furthermore, there is no example of SP discussed in the literature for which the terms A(f i , f k ) = 0, and, therefore, the structure (6) seems quite general.

Weak second-order ergodicity is related to the structure of the power spectrum of y(t; s) = x(t)x(t-s)

Its covariance function is γ y (τ ; s) = m 4 (t, t -s, t -τ, t -s -τ ) -γ 2 (s), (7)
where γ(.) is the covariance function of x(t), and m 4 its fourth-order moment. The power spectrum of y(t; s) is the Fourier transform of γ y (τ ; s), or

Γ y (f ; s) = γ y (τ ; s) exp(-2πjf τ )dτ, (8)
Expressing m 4 of ( 7) in terms of its Fourier transform M 4 (f ) yields

m 4 (t, τ, s) M 4 (f )g(f )df , (9)
with g(f

) = exp[2πj{f T rt -(f 3 + f 4 )τ -(f 2 + f 4 )s}].
The stationary manifold f T r = 0 appears immediately in this expression. Indeed, because of the assumption of stationarity, the function m 4 in (9)

does not dependon t This is ensured by the relation f T r = 0, and therefore the first exponential term of the integral is equal to one. By inserting thielation into (8), performing the integration with respect to τ , which introduces the term δ(f + f 3 + f 4 ), and afterwards the integration in f 4 , we obtain

Γ y (f ; s) = M 4 (f 1 , f 2 , f 3 , -f -f 3 ) exp[2πj(f 2 -f -f 3 )s]df 1 df 2 df 3 -cδ(f ), (10)
wihj c = γ ( s)2.
Let us now calculate the contribution to Γ y (f ; s) of the various terms appearing in M 4(f ) The last term of (6) introduces the term δ(f T r) Used in (10) this gives δ(f 1 + f 2 -f ). As a consequence, the contribution of the density B(f ) on the stationary manifold introduces the term

T B = B(f 1 , f -f 1 , f 3 ) exp[2πj(f 1 + f 3 )s]df 1 df 3 . (11)
Let us now calculate the contribution T 1 of the first NM appearing in [START_REF] Picinbono | [END_REF]. This introduces the term

A(f 1 , f 2 )δ(f 1 + f 2)δ(f 3 -f -f 3 in the integral (10).
As a result, this term is

T 1 = δ(f ) A(f 1 , f 3 ) exp[2πj(f 1 + f 3 )s]df 1 df 3 . (12)
By following the same procedure we find that the two terms due to the last two manifolds of ( 5) are equal to

T 2 = A(f 1 , f -f 1 )df 1 , DRAFT January 7, 2018 T 3 = A(f 1 , f -f 1 ) exp[2πj(2f 1 -f )s]df 1 df 3 . (13)
Finally, te term continig the factor δ(ν) in Γ y (f ; s) is

T δ = A(f 1 , f 3 ) exp[2πj(f 1 + f 3 )s]df 1 df 3 -γ 2 (s). (14)
In order to test WSO ergodicity by applying the result indicated in the Introduction, we have to verify whether or not there is a spectral line at the frequency zero. If the coefficient T δ in ( 14) is equal to zero and if the other terms are bounded, there is no spectral line, and x(t) is WSO ergodic. On the other hand, lack of ergodicity can come from several origins. This can appear if T δ in ( 14) is not equal to zero and if the other terms are bounded. In these cases, it appears that the spectral line, and therefore the ergodicity property, is entirely due to the structure of the terms A(f 1 , f 3 ) on the NMs. However, there are more complicated situations, the best example being the case where x(t) is normal, as analyzed in the next section.

The previous analysis was only devoted to second-order ergodicity and the corresponding calculations require the use of spectral moments up to the fourth order. It is clear that similar calculations can be extended to ergodicity of an order higher than two. The principles are the same but the detailed expressions are more complicated. It is obvious that testing weak ergodicity of order n requires the use of spectral moments of order 2n However, it appears that the role of the NMs remains the same.

III. EXAMPLES

A. Normal Case

Suppose that x(t) is a normal SP. This implies that the last term of ( 14) is zero. Suppose first that there is no spectral line in the spectrum of x(t). This means that the second term of (2) is zero. In this case, the coefficient T of ( 14) is zero and the second term is bounded. As a consequence, x(t) is WFO and WSO ergodic. Suppose now that there is one spectral line in the spectrum of x(t) at a nonzero frequency. As x(t) is real, its power spectrum is symmetric, and our assumption allows us to write [START_REF] Shiryaev | On conditions for ergodicity of stationary processes in terms of higher order moments[END_REF] in the form

Γ(f ) = Γ b (ν) + γ[δ(f -f i ) + δ(f + f i )]
It is clear that these spectral lines do not change the fact that x(t) is WFO ergodic. Furthermore, the coefficient T of ( 14) is still equal to zero. This does not mean that there is no spectral line at the frequency zero. Indeed, by coupling the terms δ(f -f i ) and δ(f + f i ) the second integral of (14) yields the term which introduces a spectral line at the frequency zero. Therefore, even if x(t) is WFO ergodic, it is not WSO ergodic. So we see that the spectral line at the frequency zero comes not from (14) but from its January 7, 2018 DRAFT second term, because A(f 1 , f 3 ) is not bounded. In conclusion, ergodicity of normal SPs requires that there is no spectral line at all in the spectrum of x(t) This is in accordance with a known result, shown by a completely different method (see [6, p. 157]): a normal process is ergodic if and only if its spectral distribution is continuous everywhere. As the power spectrum is the derivative of the spectral distribution, this is equivalent to saying that there is no spectral line in the spectrum.

B. Spherical Invariant Processes

A process x(t) is said to be spherically invariant if it can be written as x(t) = Au(t), where u(t) is a normal SP and A a random variable independent of u(t). For simplicity we assume that the mean values of A and u(t) are zero. Furthermore, we assume that the variance of A 2 is not zero, which means that A is not a random variable taking only two values +a and a. The results from these assumptions are that x(t) cannot be normal and, therefore, its fourth-order spectral moment has no reason to take the form (4). We shall, however, see that this spectral moment satisfies [START_REF] Picinbono | [END_REF], with specific values of A and B. For this, note that the power spectrum of x(t) is m 2 Γ u (f ), where m 2 is the variance of A and Γ u (f ) the power spectrum of u(t). We assume that this spectrum does not contain a spectral line. Asu(t) is normal.

As a result, the fourth-order spectral moment of x(t) is given by ( 6) where the term B(f 1 , f 2 , f 3 ) is zero and

A(f i , f k ) = m 4 Γ(f i )Γ(f k ).
This implies that the last two terms of (14) are bounded. The first term can be expressed as δ(f )m 4 m 2 2 γ 2 u (s) where m 4 = E(A 4 ) and γ u (.) is the correlation function of u(t). The conclusion is straightforward: the SP x(t) is WSO ergodic if and only m 4 -m 2 2 = 0. As this expression is the variance of A 2 , this is equivalent to saying that A2 2 is not random. This implies either that A is not random or that A is a random variable taking only two values ±a, so that A 2 = a 2 If A is not random, Au(t). As a conclusion, the only spherically invariant SP that are WSO are the normal processes. This property has also been obtained by completely different methods in [START_REF] Vershik | Some characteristic properties of Gaussian stochastic processes[END_REF]. Note finally that x(t) is an example of SP for which M4(f) is uniquely distributed on the normal manifolds, which means that the term B(f) is zero, and the nonnormal character is due to the fact that the density in the NMs is not normal.


Ramon Marti

HAL is

American slang and phraseology beyond their borders

Ramón Martí Solano

Introduction

It is a well-known fact that the influence of American English on British English is not a recent phenomenon. However, the use of a strictly American phraseology is definitely something that bears on the linguistic production of the last decade even though a certain number of expressions originating in the United Sates had been adopted by British English in previous decades of the twentieth century and even before. It has already been pointed out that this influence is far more widespread in certain language registers or genres in British English (Moon 1998: 134-135). What is more, and in the case of lexicalized variants of the same phraseological unit (PhU), "corpus evidence shows the increasing incidence of American variants in British English" (Moon 2006: 230-231) 1 . This piece of research aims to describe and analyze the influence and extent of American slang and phraseology on British English:

The common European linguistic and cultural heritage has had a strong influence on English FEIs2 in the past; less so today, since the strongest influence appears now to be intervarietal, with American FEIs penetrating British English (Moon 1998: 41) Some PhUs that originated in the US and were considered as American expressions in earlier dates are no longer geographically motivated and are used by speakers of British English as part of their own phraseological background. Examples such as to make/cut a long story short and rule sth with an iron hand/fist 3 show that these PhUs are well established and are so widespread that they are no longer regarded as American expressions, even though the latter is labeled as US in the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary (CALD3). It goes without saying that cases such as these should be considered in the same way as some former intervarietal loanwords such as belittle, governmental, lengthy, bogus, boss, alibi or commute, originally American coinages and subsequently imported and expanded into use in Great Britain and no longer labeled as American in current dictionaries and other lexicographical works. However, many other idioms which were originally American have become fashionable in British English, in particular in journalism or the media. Other American idioms become known to British speakers because of the influence of American culture, for example films and music. In some cases 'American' idioms are now so common in British English that it would be wrong to label them as only or even mainlyused in American English. Even though some people may think of these idioms as American, they are now much more widely known and used. (CIDI, vii) This quotation from the Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms (CIDI) does not, for obvious reasons, take into account the different degrees of institutionalization and frequency of use of a certain number of distinctive and idiosyncratic American idioms in British English and, in particular, their presence in the British press. We are convinced that the language of the media represents the ideal environment for phraseological research since multi-word lexical items and other sorts of innovative lexical combination "are more likely to be found in journalism than in other text-types" (Moon 2001: 229). After a brief historical background of the Anglo-American linguistic relations, we examine, first, the concepts of slang and phraseology and their interrelation. Then we determine what can be regarded as a strictly American phraseology and the criteria behind it. The following chapter deals with the use of general corpora for slang and phraseological research and the need of online newspaper archives to complement this type of investigation. We proceed with the lexicographical treatment that these multi-word lexical items get in dictionaries and thesauri and finally we focus on a frequency study carried out using the electronic archives of the British newspaper The Guardian as a working corpus. This study shows the incidence and pervasiveness of American phraseology in this type of discourse and the various degrees of usage and levels of institutionalization.

American lexical and phraseological influence on British English

The linguistic relations between the United States of America and the United Kingdom have fluctuated along the centuries but generally speaking Britons have traditionally shown different degrees of hostility toward American English. The language was brought to North America when the first European colonists settled along the eastern coast of Massachusetts and Virginia. For obvious reasons, the first words that found their way into British English were all related to elements of nature, flora or fauna characteristic of the new territories such as opossum, persimmon or raccoon.

American words could even displace traditional English ones. In Britain, the fruits of certain species of bog plants were known as marsh-worts or fen-berries. When the related North-American fruits were imported from New England in 1686, they were called by the name given to them in America: cranberries (1672). (Bailey 2003: 475-6) These new terms that designated new realities were accepted and incorporated into the English language on the eastern shores of the Atlantic. But as far as slang and phraseology are concerned, it must be stated that it is not until de mid-19 th century that there is a distinctive and characteristic American production of familiar, colloquial and substandard lexicon (Mencken 2000: 567). As it appears, Americanisms were often synonymous with slang, a situation which has not changed much from the beginning of the 20 th century:

When the English papers denounce Americanisms, which is very often, it is commonly slang that arouses their most violent dudgeon. This dudgeon, of course, is grounded upon its very success: the American movies and talkies have implanted American slang in England even more copiously than they have implanted more decorous American neologisms. (Mencken 2000: 571) 4 This association is, nevertheless, very well grounded in the traditional perception that British people have had, and they still have on the whole, of Americans for the last 100 years or so.

It is quite true, of course, that many Americanisms have entered the speech of England, some imperceptibly, some over a great deal of opposition The transfer, as a matter of fact, began quite early, long before talking films and radio were even thought of. Sir William Craigie states in The Study of American English (Oxford, 1927) that although, "for some two centuries, roughly down to 1820, the passage of new words or senses across the Atlantic was regularly westwards," practically the only exceptions being words denoting things peculiar to America, "with the nineteenth century … the contrary current begins to set in … bearing with it many a piece of drift-wood to the shores of Britain." (Pyles 1952: 217) In the above-mentioned work Craigie gives several examples of American words having entered British English such as prairie, blizzard or squatter but he also includes some PhUs such as to strike oil, to make one's pile or to take a back seat. These expressions, although coined in America, are today part of the common core of multi-word lexical items in the English-speaking world. Verbal predicates, together with noun groups and prepositional phrases, represent the largest proportion of PhUs in English and, when they do not include specific constituents, they tend to be adopted quite freely by the other varieties. Pyles also cites other former scholars on the subject of American English such as Weekley and Hornwill and other examples of American PhUs having been imported elsewhere, namely to cut no ice, to fill the bill and hot air, among others.

English men of letters and politicians usually found the language spoken in America despicable and very disagreeable. This animosity toward American English and the strong belief that the English of England was superior have been constant traits of the attitude of many a prominent figure in the United Kingdom:

In 1955, the Prince of Wales asserted: "We must act now to ensure that Englishand that, to my way of thinking, means English Englishmaintains its position as the world language well into the next century." (Bailey 2003: 495) Such common phrases as be/feel under the weather and cut no ice with sb are mentioned, among many other expressions and words, in an article published in London in 1929 as "Americanisms that have become firmly lodged in English." (Mencken 2000: 231). Mencken carries on with other American expressions which have worked their way into England. These include fill the bill and fly off the handle (Mencken 2000: 557).

The word Americanism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in its third sense as "A word or phrase peculiar to, or extending from, the United States." The term is certainly not devoid of an important amount of negative connotations, as other words ending by -ism:

What is American about American English is still a staple criticism for British journalists, and Americanism as a term for reprobate English flourishes. A computer-search of the "quality" London newspapers printed in 1992 yielded such phrases as "the usual quota of insidious, unnoticed Americanisms" and "those loose Americanisms of demotic speech." […] "Americanisms" are never praised, though there may be a begrudging suggestion that they are racy, fashionable, and colloquial. (Bailey 2003: 459) Even though the actual term "Americanism" is sometimes associated to a discourse of a disparaging or deprecating nature in Great Britain, words and phrases of American origin appear in all different types of lexical contexts, texttypes and language registers with no particular negative connotation. As a general rule, British speakers, as speakers of any other language, make use of their lexicon regardless of etymology or word-origin unless there is a conscious metalinguistic use or a humorous or facetious intention.

However, in an article published in the British newspaper The Daily Mail as recently as January 6 th 2011, Matthew Engels, a columnist of the Financial Times, launches a scathing and reactionary attack on the invasion of American phrases and stereotypes into British English. Unsurprisingly enough, the two adjectives associated with the word Americanism in this article are ugly and witless.5

American slang and phraseology

It is rather infrequent to find the terms slang and phraseology together in academic literature. However, this is not the case in dictionary descriptions of either slang words or multi-word lexical items. PhUs, when labeled as American in dictionaries of idioms, are usually labeled as well either as offensive or informal or slang. This shows, from a lexicographical perspective, the direct connection between PhUs, especially American PhUs, and the non-standard or substandard registers in English.

The concept of slang itself has constantly evolved since the first recorded use of the term and its sense has been extended to include not only cant, jargon and vulgar language but also all types of colloquialisms and informal expressions as expressed in the introduction of the Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang (ODMS):

Finally, in the early years of the nineteenth century, the term 'slang' came to be applied much more generally to any 'language of a highly colloquial type, considered as below the level of standard educated speech, and consisting either of new words or of current words employed in some new special sense'. (ODMS 1992: v) Dictionaries of slang and slang thesauri do not normally represent just one geographical variety but they encompass as much lexical and phraseological material as possible from different language varieties. The general lexicographical practice is to label those entries which are markedly and distinctively characteristic of language varieties other than British English or American English, such as South African English, Hibernian English, Australian English or New Zealand English. However, reference to British and American English can sometimes be found for those words and phrases which are restricted to such subgroups as, for instance, American Black English or Cockney rhyming slang.

We tend to associate American slang to words describing mainly people, often disapprovingly, such as bozo ("a stupid person"), dweeb ("a person who is physically and socially awkward and has little confidence"), honky ("a word used by some black people to refer to a white person"), john ("a man who is the customer of a prostitute"), leatherneck ("a soldier in the US Marine Corps"), patsy ("a person who it is easy to cheat or make suffer") or tightwad ("a person who is not willing to spend money"). Other associations, as is common with slang in general, are with alcohol and drugs in words such as blow ('cocaine'), hooch ("strong alcohol, especially whiskey"), sauce ("alcohol"), junk ("a dangerous drug, especially heroin"), shooting gallery ("a place where people go to inject illegal drugs") and with words related to crime and violence such as hit ("an act of murder"), pen ("penitentiary"), punk ("a young man who fights and is involved in criminal activities")or sting ("a clever and complicated act of stealing"). But if we look at the CALD3 we find that informal, slang, offensive and humorous are the four usage labels applied to the majority of American idioms found in its nomenclature, which substantially widens the number and the range of substandard lexical items coming from the U.S. and corroborates what the Cassell's Dictionary of Slang (CDS) calls "the pre-eminence of America in today's slang vocabularies" (CDS 2000: vii). But some lexicographers do not always relate or associate slang with phraseology or idioms as the following quotation from the American Slang Dictionary (ASD) illustrates:

Other non-slang idioms are: change one's tune, lead a dog's life, raised in a barn, and streaming mad. Idioms that are also slang include: spew one's guts out, dead from the neck up, do a job on someone, and ream someone out. Many slang phrases are also idiomatic, but slang and idiom refer to different aspects of words and expressions. Slang focuses on informality and the characteristics bulleted previously, whereas idiomatic refers to the nonliteral interpretation of a phrase. Some slang phrases are idioms, but all idioms are not slang. (ASD 2006: xvi) Considering that the vast majority of the common core idioms can be classified as belonging to a standard register and that idioms labeled American are usually labeled informal or slang, we can infer that idioms originating in the U.S. carry with them, for speakers of other varieties of English, an aura of informality, sometimes even vulgarity, which is inevitably associated to the American way of life.

What is then American phraseology and how does it relate to slang? We consider American phraseology as the inventory of a number of phrases which have been coined in the U.S. and which may or may not contain an element, in the form of a lexical constituent, making reference to a native, historic or current reality characteristic of this country. For the present study I have not taken into consideration spelling variants (off-color/off-colour), inflectional variants (highstrung/highly-strung) or prepositional variants (in a pinch/at a pinch) which stand for minor and thinly-represented phenomena, even though some American inflectional variants are gaining ground in British English, as is the case with put a dampener/damper on something.

In the seminal work on English phraseology Phraseologie der englischen Sprache, Gläser draws a clear distinction between what she describes as the denotative and the connotative meanings of PhUs. Inside connotations she establishes the following subtypes: derogatory, taboo, jocular/humor/facetious, appreciative, formal, archaic, foreign, colloquial and slang. For colloquial she supplies examples such as forty winks, full of beans, in a blue funk and to play ducks and drakes with sb. For slang, the idioms she mentions include big banana, the whole caboodle, off one's rocker, to have a ball, to get one's books, on the razzle-dazzle and up the creek (Gläser 1986: 36). It is obvious that it is extremely difficult to draw a line between what can be considered as colloquial and what counts as slang (Horwill 1939: vii), but one thing is certain: some expressions originally regarded as slang become gradually institutionalized and for that matter accepted by larger groups of speakers, a fact which allows them to climb up the language register ladder.

Elements of or reference to American culture

Is it relevant to ask oneself whether there is a distinct American phraseology when the large majority of idiomatic expressions are shared by both American and British English? An example such as bury the hatchet shows the evolution of idioms which originated in the U.S. 6 and which have become widely used all over the English-speaking world. Nonetheless, some idiomatic expressions contain constituents that are distinctly and unmistakably American either because they refer to extra-linguistic realities characteristic to this country or because they refer to elements associated to its history, popular culture (music, cinema, etc.) or traditions, as for instance be whistling Dixie, 50 million Elvis fans can't be wrong or a new kid on the block. The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms (AHDI) describes the entry whistle Dixie as follows:

Whistle Dixie Engage in unrealistic, hopeful fantasizing, as in If you think you can drive there in two hours, you're whistling Dixie. This idiom alludes to the song "Dixie" and the vain hope that the Confederacy, known as Dixie, would win the Civil War. (AHDI 2003: 462) A search for this unit in the electronic archives of The Guardian (GEA) has yielded a total of 14 article results of which only one corresponds to the idiomatic use of the phrase:

It's been a bad few weeks, dominated by the spectacle of Lebanon being bombed to bits while our prime minister watched with his hands in his pockets, whistling Dixie. (GEA, 9 August 2006) At the other end of the spectrum, a string such as a new kid on the block is either not found in some dictionaries of slang or simply unlabeled. This phrase, which is labeled as American & Australian in the CALD3, is one of the most widely used idioms of American origin to be found in British journalistic discourse. Even if the nominal constituent kid has been employed in familiar speech (labeled as slang by the OED in the fifth sense of its dictionary entry) for child in Britain, its sense of "young man or woman" is definitely American (OED Vol. VIII: 421). As for block, known in the U.S. as "[a] connected or compact group of houses or other buildings" from 1796 onwards (Craigie 1940: 206), it should be noted that it is this new American sense of the word that becomes apparent in the idiom.

Other phrases are decidedly more opaque for the contemporary speaker of whichever variety of the English language. This is the case of paint the town red, a well-documented example of a phrase of American origin which is geographically unmotivated and therefore considered as part of the common core of English phraseology. According to the American Thesaurus of Slang (ATS), the first occurrence can be traced back to 1884. This dictionary explains its origin as follows: "Presumably originally of celebrating cowboys shooting up the town and threatening to "paint it red" if there was any interference." (ATS 1953: 883).

Traditionally, one of the main sources of idiomatic expressions has been sports and other leisure activities such as card games. Special mention should be made here of hunting and fishing, which have provided numerous phrases having entered common speech and pervading even today all sorts of speech situations-the American expression fish or cut bait is just one example. We could say that the role that hunting, fishing and other traditional sports have played in the past centuries has been assumed by American football and baseball today. Drop the ball, (right) off the bat, get to/reach first base, be out in left field, come out of left field, touch base, a whole new ball game, in the ballpark, play hardball, be a slam dunk, heavy hitter and Monday-morning quarterback make up a sample of phrases from these sports that have become idiomatic and, above all, that have transcended the exclusively American usage to become an integral part of other varieties of English.

Discrete American lexical constituents

Other idioms can be instantly labeled as American insofar as they contain a lexical constituent, usually a noun, which denotes or refers to elements characteristic to the United States, as for example the units of money dollar, buck, dime or cent in phrases such as pay top dollar, look a million bucks, be a dime a dozen or not a red cent. These multi-word lexical items seem to have been accepted by British journalism and mass media on the whole but also in everyday familiar or substandard speech. Other examples include the American word cookie in phrases such as toss your cookies or a tough cookie. Finally we should consider in this respect those phrases including a distinctive American lexical constituent as for instance store or elevator in phrases such as mind the store or sb's elevator doesn't go all the way to the top (floor).

It has been pointed out that one of the reasons why some American words and phrases are used in the British media, and in the British press in particular, is because journalists tend to include them in items of news coming from the U.S. or in editorials about this country mainly for rhetorical and stylistic reasons:

For example, the mainly American beat the bushes 'try hard to obtain or achieve something' occurs in BofE in British journalism, admittedly with respect to American or international topics. […] And while most English FEIs exist in both varieties, they may well have different distributions, thus affecting register of use. (Moon 1998: 135) The following example form the GEA is quite revealing of this phenomenon:

The United States, compounding this, has not regarded it as its task to stop the violence but has instead let it go forward. The question of who's minding the store comes to mind. (GEA 24 July 2006) Attention should also be drawn here to American/British lexical pairs such as closet/cupboard in the PhU a skeleton in the closet/cupboard. No token of either variant has been found in the BNC. However, the electronic archives of The Guardian have yielded the following results: 257 article results of a skeleton in the closet and 293 results of a skeleton in the cupboard. Even though the number of occurrences of the British variant form is slightly higher, the overwhelming presence of the American variant is undoubtedly not negligible.

American slang words

Less commonly, American slang words can be found as constituents of wellestablished PhUs. Rap in the sense of "an accusation of crime, or a punishment" as it appears in the strings a bum rap and beat the rap is a clear example of the development of lexicalized multi-word lexical items common in substandard registers of American English having been exported overseas.

The verb ride in the sense of "try to control someone and force them to work" as it appears in the American PhU ride herd on somebody is another example of this type of phenomenon. According to the OED this expression was originally used to mean "to guard and control (a herd of cattle) by riding on its perimeter" (OED Vol. XIII: 901) and this sense was later extended to mean "to boss" or "to keep in check".

Lexical variants

One of the most interesting developments concerning the influence of American slang and phraseology on other world Englishes has to do with lexical variants in PhUs. Idiomatic expressions are not as fixed lexically or syntactically as one might think or at least as lexicographical descriptions tend to present them. These multi-word units are more often than not varied and undergo different types of transformations. To make a long story short, we can say that there are three main types of phraseological variation, namely, and in order of importance, lexical variance, lexical insertion and truncation or elision. Table 1 shows some examples of lexical variants in PhUs in American and British English: The expressions in Table 1 are but a sample of many other lexical variants found in the two varieties. Burn your bridges epitomizes, to my phraseological eye, the extent and incidence of American lexical variants in British English. We have carried out a search for the two lexical variants: the originally American preferred realization bridges and its British counterpart boats in the BNC and in the GEA. The results set out in Table 2 are quite revealing of the fact that the American variant form has largely accrued in newspaper discourse if we look at the results in the GEA where burn the bridges displays the larger number of occurrences. Equally interesting is to observe that only three instances of the American variant occur in the BNC, which clearly shows scanty evidence of this form up to 1993 in British English. The expansion of the American variant has been so remarkable in the last fifteen years or so that British speakers usually hesitate between the two possibilities as the following quotation illustrates: So you won't be nipping back to London from Thursday evening to Tuesday morning like most of our visiting writers, I said. 'No,' she said, 'I've burned my boats, or is it bridges?' and smiled but there was a trapped hunted look in her smile as she said it, […]. (Lodge 2002: 6)

The BNC and the electronic archives of newspapers as corpora

The British National Corpus (BNC) is a corpus of contemporary British English from the second half of the 20 th century and going as late as 1993. We consider that for this precise reason a corpus of this kind cannot reflect the latest changes concerning idiom usage in British English. Corpus research shows that the vast majority of American idiom usage in the British press has chiefly taken place in the last decade. The advantages of using the archives of a newspaper in the guise of a linguistic corpus are manifold. On the one hand, the texts composing these archives are articles mainly from the year 2000 to date, which makes archives a precious source for contemporary lexical and phraseological research. On the other hand, the huge diversity of sections found in broadsheets represents an extraordinary source of linguistic variety even if theoretically the linguistic production of newspapers is generally classified as journalistic discourse in genre studies. However, article result figures must be taken with a grain of salt since some of these multi-word lexical items may be used with a different sense from the idiomatic one. The American phrase go postal, which as an idiom means "to become very angry and do something violent" has a medium-high level of frequency in the GEA. The fact of the matter is that a large number of these occurrences correspond to a combination, frequently found in headlines, and used to indicate "going back to traditional letter-writing". We have therefore not included this item in our frequency study. All this leads us on the one hand, to insist on the insufficiency of a general corpus like the BNC for a piece of research of this type and on the other hand, to stress the importance and usefulness of newspaper archives as a substitute corpus 7 . Newspaper corpora on CD-ROM or online newspaper archives are available and invaluable tools for frequency studies of idioms for the simple reason that these units are rarely found in general corpora (Minugh 1999: 68).

As an example illustrative of the arguments presented above, the American PhU a slam dunk has only one occurrence in the BNC whereas there are 256 article results in the GEA. A detailed description and analysis of the characteristics and usage of such an expression and of the contexts in which it occurs in British English would be simply impossible if we were to use the BNC as a working corpus.

Lexicographical treatment

Far matters of space and for the sake of lexicographical specificity, we have decided not to conduct a research on the presence of American idioms or American idiom variants in L1 dictionaries, L2 dictionaries and bilingual dictionaries. It goes without saying that the choice of idiomatic expressions is ultimately in the hands of each lexicographer and that several extra-linguistic constraints imposed by publishing houses actually affect, to different degrees, the inclusion or exclusion of an important amount of these multi-word units. Consequently, we have only looked into dictionaries of idioms, dictionaries of slang and slang thesauri.

Dictionaries of Idioms

As far as the PhU not amount to a hill/row of beans is concerned, both the frequency search and the lexicographical survey show how the so-called American variant is actually well-established in British English and therefore can be regarded as a common-core variant or, otherwise stated, as geographically unmarked. The variant form hill is favored in the GEA if we compare the number of article results which amount to 57 for hill and 25 for row. Lemmatization is predominantly done using the constituent hill if we look at Table 3. Four out of the five dictionaries of idioms favor the American variant-the only one not doing so is the Oxford Dictionary of Current and Idiomatic English (ODCIE2), which was first published in 1983 and is clearly biased toward British English. (not) worth a row of beans

In Table 3 we have examined the case of the PhU not amount to a hill of beans/not worth a row of beans as a instructive example of the evolution of phraseological variant forms in English but also as a representative instance of how the American variant is gaining ground and how it has become customary not only in everyday use in British English but also in its lexicographical treatment. The bias of the LID toward the American variant form is most noticeable as it gives the British variant as a second option between brackets.

In order to compare the lexicographical treatment of American PhUs a study has been carried out in which 40 PhUs from the Longman Idioms Dictionary (LID) 8 with the label American English have been chosen at random in order to determine whether or not and to what extent these entries are included in other dictionaries of idioms. It is interesting to note that the vast majority of PhUs labeled as American by the LID are also labeled as slang or spoken, which confirms the regular association between American speech and a high degree of informality. For the purpose of this study we have used five dictionaries of idioms, namely the Collins Cobuild Dictionary of Idioms (CCDI), the Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms (CIDI), the Longman Idioms Dictionary (LID), the Oxford Dictionary of Idioms (ODI) and the Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English. Volume 2 (ODCIE2) Table 4 shows, among other things, the striking difference between the treatment of American idioms in the LID, which has been used as a benchmark and obviously totals 100% of the units selected for the study, and the ODCIE2 which only registers two out of the forty strings, that is 5%. Here is a quotation from the introduction of the ODCIE2 which clearly accounts for this fact:

The idioms in this dictionary represent the usage of educated British speakers in the latter half of the twentieth century. This is not to say that the dictionary confines itself to idioms that are peculiarly British. Very manyif not mostof the expressions listed form part of a 'common core': they are readily understood, and commonly used, in other parts of the English-speaking world. While no attempt has been made to describe expressions which are solely, or principally, American, the dictionary does include a few itemsmarked (US) or (esp US)which have a marginal status in British English. These are idioms which though not fully established in British usage, and still regarded as 'American' by some speakers, are nonetheless used often enough to merit inclusion in a dictionary of this kind. Note, for example: be a different (etc) ball game … (esp US) […] (ODCIE2: xxxviii) Apart from the fact that the selection of headwords or head-phrases depends, although not exclusively, on the personal choice of the lexicographer, the results set out in Table 4 demonstrate that the other three dictionaries have adopted a moderate, middle-of-the-road approach to the inclusion of these units in their nomenclature.

Dictionaries of Slang and Slang Thesauri

We have used for our research a certain number of slang dictionaries and thesauri (see references). Our selection of American PhUs has been benchmarked against Green's The Slang Thesaurus (GST) and the three referenced dictionaries of slang, namely Cassell's Dictionary of Slang (CDS), The Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (CNPDSUE) and The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang (ODMS) in order to account for representativeness of phraseology in lexicographical works on slang and substandard language. Taking into consideration the lexicographers' personal choices and other editing and commercial constraints, we can state that these American English idioms are present, all in all, in the works consulted. Mention should be made of some exceptions to the general trend. Dictionaries sometimes vary in the choice of the verb collocate for phrases such as beat the rap, the one favored by the GST and the ODMS, whereas the CNPDSUE favors ripe the rap and the CDS, take the rap. It goes without saying that some PhUs are not registered by one dictionary or another, as is the case with ballpark figure which does not appear in the nomenclature of the ODMS, or even PhUs that, although registered by a thesaurus, are wrongly or awkwardly classified, as for instance duck soup which appears twice under the subheadings "quality" and "goodness" in the GST. Lexical variants are also registered, as with toss the cookie, which is recorded as barf or blow one's cookies in the GST.

As far as the representativeness of American idioms in slang thesauri is concerned, the GST exemplifies the lexicographical approach to such a phenomenon. Word and phrases alike are crammed in under headings and subheadings regardless of their frequency of use or their origin. In fact, no reference or geographical label whatsoever is given to identify entries as common core, mainly British or mainly American. The only geographical labels used by this thesaurus are US black for Black American English and Aus. for Australian English. One must conclude from this lexicographical practice that no distinction is made between usages that are found in actuality nearly exclusively in American or in British English. In view of this lexicographical practice, it comes as no surprise that all the American idioms under scrutiny have their entry in this thesaurus. Moreover, when idioms present different lexical variant forms, these are registered without any reference to language variety, as, for example, blue-eyed boy/fairhaired boy or come unglued/come unstuck.

Frequency study

PhUs in general and idioms in particular are extremely rare in corpora, a fact that has been underlined by several scholars [START_REF] Moon | Fixed Expressions and Idioms in English: A Corpus-based Approach[END_REF][START_REF] Gläser | Dictionaries of Idioms and Phraseology in English[END_REF]. Exception should be made of such grammatical strings as in general, in terms of, in addition to, etc, which are quite recurrent in discourse. Frequency, when dealing with idioms, is a very relative notion since, contrary to monolexical units, they have a much lower frequency occurrence in corpora. Figures which could be regarded as low or very low for single function words or lexical words can be seen as high or very high when they are applied to idiomatic expressions: 74 occurrences (of red herring) in 100,000,000 may sound quite rare, but this is actually one of the more frequent idioms. The expression kick(ed) the bucket, by contrast, is much rarer. It is frequently mentioned but rarely used. It occurs only 11 times in the British National Corpus. Worse still, closer examination reveals that only two of these occurrences are genuine uses of the idiom. The rest are either independent uses of the words in their literal, physical meaning, or mentions of the idiom in scholarly discourse. A frequency of 2 in 100 million is extremely low, implying that an ordinary person will only use or see or hear the expression once every five or ten years. And yet few native speakers of English are unaware of the expression in its idiomatic meaning. These facts are quite puzzling, and highlight the problem facing the collector and analysts of idioms. (Hanks 2000: 311-2) Frequencies are then higher or lower, as far as journalism is concerned, depending on pragmatics, that is whether the holistic meaning of the string lends itself to being used in contexts related to politics, economics or any of the main topics dealt with by the press. It is evident that some idiomatic expressions are unsuitable for this type of discourse insofar as they tend to appear mostly, or rather exclusively, in conversational exchanges due to their pragmatic nature, as with eat my shorts, or because they are extremely vulgar or offensive as shoot the shit. Other typically American expressions are extremely unlikely to be found in journalistic discourse for the simple reason that they are too blatantly slangy and generally restricted to conversational exchanges, as with get off your tail, an expression used to admonish someone to start doing something profitable.

AmE PhUs of high and medium-high frequency

For the purposes of this study, and in light of previous quantitative phraseological research, we have determined that a frequency of occurrence ranging from 100 to 300 article results in the archives of a leading British quality newspaper is to be considered as high. Consequently, and for the other groups of American English phraseological units (AmE PhUs), the pre-established frequency ranges are set as follows: medium-high for occurrences between 50 and 100, medium for occurrences between 20 and 50, low for occurrences between 10 and 20 and finally very low for occurrences below a total of 10 occurrences. A random selection of the 321 idioms labeled as American English only in the CALD3 on CD-ROM has been used for the present frequency study. Not surprisingly, the highly-rated idioms of American origin in Table 5 are for the most part considered as common core idioms among British speakers, except for play hardball and pay top dollar. Verb predicates and nominal groups seem to be the grammatical types of AmE PhUs that have become common and pervasive in British journalism. The phrase having obtained the largest number of article results is play hardball, which is defined as follows:

play hardball/hardball it/play rough v. [1970s+] (orig. US) to act ruthlessly and single-mindedly in pursuit of a goal; thus hardballer, one who is ruthless and aggressive. [baseball imagery] (CDS 2000: 927) This expression represents well the status of phrases originally coined in the U.S. that have been imported by other language varieties and, in the present case, have been easily assimilated by the British mainstream phraseology. The same thing applies to pay top dollar, which does not appear singular or peculiar in British contexts and, although still fairly informal, is widely used in journalistic discourse. Although with a rod of iron is traditionally considered to be the eminently British variant, there are only 43 results of this phrase compared to 165 of the commoner equivalent PhU with an iron fist/hand for the same period (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009) in the GEA.

The popular American phrase make a pit stop meaning "to make a short stop during a long car journey in order to rest and eat" represents a semantic shift from the same phrase as used in motor racing. Going from the more specific to the more general, the phrase is widely used both in America and in Britain. There are a number of 107 articles in the GEA, which accounts for its commonness and pervasiveness. An important number of occurrences refer to the "literal" meaning in sport: 60 from the section "Sport", 38 from "Sport -Formula One" and 29 from "Sport -Motor Sport". The second group in number comes from the section "Travel". It should be pointed out that, again, the number of in the BNC is barely 4, which contrasts starkly with the results in the GEA. Some of the examples of the idiomatic use of the phrase show a further development of its semantics toward a more general sense of "taking/making a stop":

No trip to China would be complete without taking a pit stop for a traditional cuppa. Even though the Chinese tea ceremony is as steeped in tradition as neighbouring Japan, it does not go in for the latter's rigid set of rules and concentrates more on setting the perfect mood. (GEA 31 July 2008) On our way back to the city centre, we make a pit stop at the Casa Luis Barragan, a hidden museum in the Tacubaya district that was once the home of Barragan, one of Mexico's most influential 20th-century architects. The entrance hallway is dark and narrow with a small yellow glass window giving the only light. (GEA 8 November 2008) This second group of American idioms includes three rather well-established phrases which take their source from baseball: a heavy hitter, a whole new ball game and come/be out of left field. The phrase a tough cookie which dates back to the 1930s and means "a survivor, an emotionally strong person" (CDS 2000: 1221) seems to be wellestablished in British journalistic discourse but also in everyday speech as British speakers, although aware of the American flavor of a word such as cookie, are familiar with this idiomatic expression as illustrated in the following example: Lee Jasper, the mayor of London's director on equalities and policing, said: "She is a firefly -small, diminutive and red-hot. She is not into flamboyant gestures but she is an exceptional officer and a tough cookie." (GEA 15 September 2006)

AmE PhUs of medium-frequency

Table 7 shows idioms that have a medium-range frequency of use in the GEA. These multi-word lexical items are, for the most part, institutionalized in British journalism although there seems to be a tendency for several of them to be used in some particular sub-genres, especially in the sports section of newspapers According to the CIDI a turkey shoot is defined as follows: "if a fight or a war is turkey shoot, one side is certain to be completely defeated because the other side is much stronger." Our investigation into this particular PhU has shown that it usually occurs in sport contexts in which the imagery and stereotypes about war are common practice among these specialized journalists.

In her introduction to the CCDI Rosamund Moon specifies that some idioms are rarely used in British English and she gives as examples live high on the hog and spin your wheels. We have carried out a search for these two phrases in the GEA. Contrary to the previous statement we have found 45 article results for live high in the hog, which visibly demonstrates that idiom usage changes rapidly: After all, it wouldn't do to give the impression that they, of all people, are now living high on the hog in Regent's Park when they should be starving, laudanumaddicted in their garrets. (GEA 11 October 2008) The PhU look a million dollars has also a lexical variant form, look a million bucks, representing a different level of informality. The former has 45 occurrences in the GEA whereas the latter is actually non-existent. This show has got everything: a brilliant, full-throated sexy dame in Clive Rowe's Sarah the Cook, who looks a million dollars in her Primark specials; a glittering, hissable villain in King Rat; […] (GEA 19 December 2007)

AmE PhUs of low and very low frequency

As observed in tables from 6 to 9, the lower we descend in the frequency range, the larger the number of multi-word lexical items of American origin. Otherwise stated, it seems that the number of occurrences of AmE PhUs is inversely proportional to their frequency in text databases. What comes of these observations is the evidence that only a certain amount of AmE PhUs are actually widespread or rather widespread in British English whereas an important number of these idioms are seldom or virtually never found in corpora. Let us consider the case of a bum steer. This American phrase, even though some dictionaries do not label it as such, has no occurrences in the BNC and only 12 article results in the GEA. What it is interesting here is the fact that it tends to occur in the "Sports" section of the newspaper, exactly 7 occurrences, out of which 5 are in the "Football" subsection as illustrated by the following example: "If someone wants to give you a bum steer, then so be it. If people want to know they should ask me," the Spurs manager moaned. "I have a list of players I wantand Keane is not on it." (GEA 26 July 2002) Table 9. Very low-frequency AmE PhUs in The Guardian Very low frequency GEA king of the hill 5 be in a snit 4 the low man on the totem pole 3 be out in left field 3 do roaring business 3 hem and haw 3 toss your cookies 2 put/throw a monkey (wrench) in the works 2 be duck soup 2 lie down on the job 1 be whistling Dixie 1 sb's elevator doesn't go all the way to the top (floor) 1 as straight as a pin 1 be all over the lot 1 50 million Elvis fans can't be wrong 0 put/work a mojo on sb 0 have a heavy foot 0

If we agree on the statement that "[t]he frequency or currency of an item is not the only reason for entering it in the inventory that is the headword list of a dictionary" (Moon 1992: 500), phrases such as be whistling Dixie is listed in 4 out of the 5 dictionaries of idioms investigated even though, with just one article result in the GEA, it can be considered as practically non-existent in British English.

Conclusion

The vast majority of multi-word lexical items are common and well-known to all varieties of English. Speakers can be more or less acquainted with certain phrases also according to the volume of their own phraseological background. Concerning idioms originating in the U.S., many of these have made their way into the other world Englishes and have eventually become common core idioms. It should be said that idiom usage can change rapidly and that one item that has a relatively low presence outside one variety may, in the matter of little time, become known and even widespread in other varieties. It is undoubtedly the presence and magnitude of American journalism and mass media in general that has lately boosted specific American expressions that were formerly restricted to domestic usage. Once these phrases or variant forms of shared phrases become institutionalized outside the American borders, they go through a process by which they become less and less geographically motivated.

There is certainly a cline or continuum in the frequency of use: the vast majority of American idioms can be found in British journalistic discourse. However, the most important feature of these intervarietal loan-phrases consists in their level of integration which is clearly determined by their frequency of use. Only a restricted number of American idioms are well-established and "in full swing" in British journalism. For the most part, phraseological Americanisms are rarely used although some of them are definitely perceived of as being common core idioms by British speakers following in this manner the tradition of other well-established expressions originating in the U.S. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Table 1 .

 1 Lexical variants in PhUs in American and British English

	American English	British English
	silent partner	sleeping partner
	chew the rag	chew the fat
	burn your bridges	burn your boats
	come unglued	come unstuck
	not be worth a hill of beans	not be worth a row of beans
	do a roaring business	do a roaring trade
	a fair-haired boy	a blue-eyed boy

Table 2 .

 2 Burn your bridges/burn your boats

	Idiom	BNC	GEA
	burn your bridges	3	82
	burn your boats	18	14

Table 3 .

 3 Lemmatization of the PhU a hill/row of beans

	Dictionary of idioms lemma
	CCDI	not amount to a hill of beans/not worth a row of beans
	CIDI	not be worth hill of beans American, informal
	LID	not amount to a hill of beans (also not amount to a row of
		beans BrE)
	ODI	a hill (or row) of beans
	ODCIE2

Table 4 .

 4 Lexicographical treatment according to dictionary of idioms of a sample of PhUs of American origin

	AmE PhU	LID	CCDI	CIDI	ODI	ODCIE2
	be right up sb's alley	+	+	+	+
	apple polisher	+	+
	a straight arrow	+	+	+	+
	sb's ass is in a sling	+	+		+
	haul ass	+		+	+
	be left holding the bag	+	+	+	+	+
	clean sb's clock	+			+
	come unglued	+	+	+
	toss your cookies	+			+
	be a dime a dozen	+	+	+	+
	hit pay dirt	+	+	+
	be whistling Dixie	+	+	+	+
	put on the dog	+		+	+
	down-and-dirty	+	+	+	+
	be in Dutch with sb	+			+
	behind the eight ball	+		+	+
	cop a feel	+		+
	play hardball	+		+
	hell on wheels	+		+
	ride herd on sb	+	+	+	+
	hit a home run	+	+
	be bleeding red ink	+	+
	a laundry list	+	+	+
	hang a left/right	+		+	+
	have legs	+	+	+

Table 5 .

 5 High-frequency AmE PhUs in The Guardian 9

	High frequency	GEA
	play hardball	248
	a new kid on the block	203
	with an iron hand/fist	165
	pay top dollar	128
	a pit stop	107

Table 6 .

 6 Medium-high-frequency AmE PhUs in The Guardian

	Medium-high frequency	GEA
	a heavy hitter	97
	lose your shirt	77
	a whole new ball game	75
	a tough cookie	67
	come/be out of left field	56
	go the whole nine yards	52

Table 7 .

 7 Medium-frequency AmE PhUs in The Guardian

	Medium frequency	GEA
	be in a funk	49
	live high on the hog	45
	look a million dollars	45
	a laundry list	44

Table 8 .

 8 Low-frequency AmE PhUs in The Guardian

	Low frequency	GEA
	mind the store	20
	kick up your heels	19
	go on the block	19
	come unglued	19
	a straight arrow	16
	out of the ballpark	15
	a bum rap	15
	a bum steer	12
	beat the rap	12
	ride herd on sb	12
	a quantum jump	10
	be an easy mark	9
	be on pins and needles	7
	a pack rat	7
	be left holding the bag	6
	go hog wild	6
	Monday-morning quarterback	6

Moon mentions not see the forest/wood for the trees and blow one's own horn/trumpet as clear examples of this type of influence.

The abbreviation FEIs stands for Fixed Expressions and Idioms.

All the examples of American/British variant forms will follow this order. So chew the rag/fat will show first the American variant form and secondly the British one.

We have used the 2000 edition of Mencken's American Language, first published in 1919.

Engels, M. 2011, "Say no to the get-go! Americanisms swamping English, so wake up and smell the coffee", http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1282449/Americanismsswamping-English-wake-smell-coffee.html

According to the American Thesaurus of Slang (ATS) the earliest date of occurrence of this expression can be traced back to 1754.

The Guardian has recently changed their search system of its electronic archives and it is no longer possible to look for exact groups of words by using the inverted commas, which makes it very difficult, sometimes impossible, to carry out searches for multi-word lexical items in this type of up-to-date word databases.

This dictionary has been chosen as the starting point for this research as it favors idioms of American origin and registers a great number of them.

The figures corresponding to the number of article results supplied in this table and in the following correspond to searches in the online archives of The Guardian which date back to June 2009.


Ramon Marti Solano

Ramón Martí Solano

Calquing and borrowing of idiomatic noun compounds

  L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire

Loan translation versus semantic borrowing

A clear distinction should be drawn between a multi-word loan translation, or a phraseological calque, as in En. yellow press > Sp. prensa amarilla and a multi-word semantic borrowing, or a phraseological semantic loan, as in En. black hole > Fr. trou noir. In the first example the combination as such does not exist in the recipient language whereas in the second example the combination already exists in the recipient language with a wellestablished, specialized meaning (in the case of En. black hole or Fr. trou noir, "a region in space where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape") and this is the case not only for Fr. trou noir but also for the other Romance languages counterparts such as It.

buco nero, Po. buraco negro or Sp. agujero negro. It is therefore, and in the case of phraseological semantic loans, a new sense of the existing multi-word unit, developed in the donor language, which is calqued. This type of semantic borrowing, in the history of Anglo-French lexical intercourse, has been designated by Mackenzie as an emprunt déguisé ('disguised loan'). Early examples are vers blanc, a calque from 'blank verse' (Mackenzie 1939: 44) or presse jaune, from 'yellow press' (Mackenzie 1939: 252). Many other examples have been observed and registered in the second half of the twentieth century, as is the case of donner le feu vert (< 'give sb/sth the green light'), first attested somewhere between 1955 and 1960 according to the Dictionnaire des expressions et locutions (DEL).

Idiomatic noun compounds, as all compounds, can be either exocentric, or wholly idiomatic, as in En. white elephant, or endocentric, or partially idiomatic, as in En. white lie. The following quotation points out this difference and establishes two distinct categories: However, such compounds are generally not regarded as idioms unless the complete lexical item is metaphoricized, for example, blue blood 'noble or royal ancestry' […] The referent of green room is literally a type of room, so the term does not qualify as an idiom. (Ayto 2006: 404) Nonetheless, a certain number of lexicographers and phraseologists include the 'white lie type' in dictionaries of idioms and phraseology research studies. White lie, to take this same example, has its own entry in the Collins Cobuild Dictionary of Idioms (CCDI).

FEIs1 functioning as nominal groups are problematic since it is not always clear how to distinguish them from noun compounds […] Defectiveness, whether syntagmatic, inflectional, or collocational, is key in distinguishing between noun compounds and nominal FEIs. In general, fixed nominal groups classified here as FEIs are metaphorical, and they tend to be evaluative rather than simply descriptive or denotative. […] a dead loss, a clean sheet, a free hand, ivory tower. (Moon 1998: 87-88) As stated above, distinguishing between a noun compound and an idiom made up of two constituents can sometimes be an arduous task. The compounds chosen by Moon are all exocentric and wholly idiomatic and metaphoricity seems to play a decisive role in establishing both categories. As far as we are concerned and for the purposes of this study, both types, wholly and partially idiomatic compounds, will be taken into consideration and will be the object of our analysis.

If we consider institutionalisation as a benchmark for acceptance of phraseological calques or loan translations, we can state that, as far as French is concerned, feu vert (green light) is the most institutionalised idiomatic compound of this type whereas éléphant blanc (a white elephant)2 is certainly the least institutionalised (Martí Solano 2012b: 211). In this context, particular attention should be paid to what has been called 'phraseological false friends' (Dobrovol'skij & Piirainen 2005: 108), that is a misleading analytical semantic similarity of constituents, as for instance En. white wedding versus Fr. mariage blanc. A white wedding in English is 'a traditional Christian marriage in a church, at which a woman who is getting married wears a white dress', whereas the compound mariage blanc is used in French to mean either a non-consummated marriage or a marriage of convenience. However, mariage blanc, with only 3 occurrences in the online archives of the British newspaper The Guardian, is definitely not a well-established borrowing in English if we compare this scanty number with other native combinations such as sham marriage, with 88 occurrences, or fake marriage, with 22 occurrences, both of them semantically equivalent and much more widely used. The existence of native equivalents to calques or borrowings has to be systematically acknowledged and verified in order to put them into perspective and measure the full extent of the phenomenon.

It seems evident that English shows a tendency to favour direct loans when compared to the other four languages. French is the main source of these loans with examples such as carte blanche or éminence grise 3 . The latter has its counterparts in the other languages, not as a direct loan but in the form of loan translations (It. eminenza grigia, Po. eminência parda and Sp. eminencia gris). The same could be said about the English borrowing from French carte blanche, usually found within the syntactic frame GIVE + SOMEBODY + CARTE BLANCHE + TO + up with It. carta bianca, Po. carta branca and Sp. carta blanca.

The 'black' compounds

The colour term black is, together with white, the most prolific constituent in compounds and other types of set phrases and fixed expressions in the five languages of this study. Idiomatic and semi-idiomatic compounds with black can be found, for instance, in the Oxford Dictionary of Idioms (ODI), which includes black box, the black sheep and black spot or in the CCDI that registers black box, black look, black mark and black sheep.

The case of the black sheep or the black sheep in the family constitutes a representative example of one of the most widespread idioms for which equivalents have been found in 50 different European languages (Piirainen 2012: 185). As for black box, this combination is included in the ODI and defined as 'an automatic apparatus, the internal operations of which are mysterious to non-experts.'5 , whereas the CCDI defines it not as a noun compound with a physical referent but in its figurative sense as 'You can refer to a process or system as a black box when you know that it produces a particular result but you do not understand how it works.'

We would like to consider the case of black spot, which is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as 'A place or area of trouble, anxiety, or danger; esp. a dangerous section of a road.' The first recorded example is from 1937 and reads 'Road-crossing improvements at 'black spots' throughout London.' Spanish has calqued this sense and has applied it to the already existing native combination punto negro. The Diccionario de la Real Academia Española (DRAE) registers the compound with two distinct senses6 different from the sense of the English combination albeit the fact that the press abounds with this calqued sense as illustrated in (1):

(1) Esta carretera suma otra característica para la reflexión: todos sus puntos negros persisten por tercer año consecutivo entre los más peligrosos de España, de acuerdo con la clasificación que realiza el Real Automóvil Club de España (RACE), que ayer

The 'white' compounds

White is widely used as an idiomatic compound constituent, with roughly the same amount of compounds as black, in the CALD. The English compound white-collar, usually instantiated as white-collar workers or white-collar crime, has been calqued in French as col blanc8 , in Italian as colletto bianco, in Portuguese as colarinho branco and in Spanish as cuello blanco.

Strikingly interesting is the nominalization of the calque and the use of the plural form to The extract from the Spanish newspaper comes from a piece of news from an international news agency, the usual gateway to different sorts of borrowings and calques. The use of the scare quotes is a clear typographical sign of the strangeness of the sense that the combination takes in the recipient language used mainly in order not to mislead potential readers.

Conversely, other combinations such as white lie have not produced calques in the Romance languages for the simple reason that they are not recent creations but compounds with a long tradition in the language. The meaning that the colour term white takes in this combination is peculiar to English since the other languages have always expressed the concept by means of a non-figurative adjective meaning harmless or sympathetic: Fr. mensonge pieux, It. bugia pietosa, Po. mentira inofensiva and Sp. mentira piadosa.

The 'grey' compounds

It seems the logical thing to do that the next colour in order should be grey, the mixture of black and white. An interesting example of semantic borrowing is En. grey area 9 that has its counterparts in Fr. zone grise, It. zona grigia, Po. zona cinzenta and Sp. zona gris. This is just another case that highlights the fact that '[t]he frequency of semantic borrowings in French has been clearly underestimated' (Picone 1996: 101), as well as in the other three languages.

As with the calques of white-collar, those of grey area are also recurrent in the press of the Romance languages in question. It should be noted that the only combination under study registered in the Oxford Collocations Dictionary (OCI) is grey area. However, and in contradiction with the nature of collocations, which are intrinsically transparent, the example provided to illustrate the grey area 9 This compound takes on a special meaning in South African English as shown in the following quotation from Nadine Gordimer's My Son's Story: 'We didn't need groceries, my school fees were paid; my mother and Baby (after school) were both working and there was no rent owed because when we moved to the city my father had bought that house in what later was called a 'grey area' where people of our kind defied the law and settled in among whites.' (Gordimer 1990: 14). Other unusual colour compounds can be found in specialised languages: 'One study assessing the effect of selective collection on the remaining household (called "grey waste") gave the following conclusions: […]' (Official report of the European Commission on Waste Incineration Techniques, see references). 'collocation' is followed by an explanation between brackets stating in a rather succinctly way 'aspects that are not clear'. This clearly demonstrates that these compounds are not regarded as collocations precisely because they do not tend to have a denotative referent.

The 'yellow' compounds

Yellow is a colour with clear negative tones in English as well as in the other languages. The word yellow is used as a constituent for names of diseases, as in yellow fever, or to refer to a contemptible, worthless person, as in yellow dog, or even to designate pejoratively sensational newspapers, as in yellow press. The word yellow can also be used in connection with such negative feelings as jealousy or cowardice. As refers to the idiomatic compound yellow press, the following is the third sense provided by the OED under the entry yellow in which it explains its peculiar and rather unmotivated origin: 3. (orig. U.S.) Applied to newspapers (or writers of newspaper articles) of a recklessly or unscrupulously sensational character. A use derived from the appearance in 1895 of a number of the New York World in which a child in a yellow dress ("The Yellow Kid") was the central figure of the cartoon, this being an experiment in colour printing designed to attract purchasers.

The calque has not really taken root in Romance languages, if we exclude the case of Spanish.

In the online archives of the Spanish newspaper El País we have found a total number of 397 hits for the loan translation prensa amarilla but 1,225 for the native non-figurative compound prensa sensacionalista. On the other hand, there are 118 hits for presse à scandale and none for presse jaune in the French national daily Le Figaro. We find the same scenario for Italian and Portuguese. Only 22 hits have been found for stampa scandalistica and none for stampa gialla in the Italian daily La Repubblica and finally 16 hits for imprensa sensacionalista and none for imprensa amarela in the Portuguese weekly O Expresso. These results clearly demonstrate that the association of the colour yellow with the head of the compound is little motivated or even unmotivated in most Romance languages. The combination does not definitely carry the same semantic connotation as it does in English.

The 'red' compounds

In English, idiomatic compounds including a colour word can have different levels of opacity and analysability. From the most opaque and least analysable such as red herring or red tape, which have clearly not lent themselves to any calques in the languages under study, to the most transparent and analysable such as red carpet and red-light. In each of these cases the colour word is connected with a different concept. Red is the colour of the heart, traditionally associated with love and passion and hence with sex, as in red-light which is also of American origin (the first recorded example in the OED is from 1900 and is used attributively in the combination red light district 10 ). In politics, red is associated with the extreme left, especially with communism and the communist party. The idea of danger, found in combinations such as red flag or red alarm, is also present in red line, which is 'a safety limit, as marked on a gauge, such as a thermometer or a rain or wind gauge'. This sense has extended its meaning to the fields of government, politics and finance to refer to 'a point beyond which a person or group is not prepared to negotiate' 11 . It is this sense, widely used by Tony Blair when he was in office, which has been calqued in the other languages, as can be observed when comparing a linha vermelha and Sp. traspasar/atravesar/pasar las líneas rojas, which seems to be more inclined to use the plural form as illustrated in ( 12):

(12) Este documento establecerá "criterios y pautas" que serán de obligado cumplimiento. Fijará las "líneas rojas" que no deberán cruzar las cadenas, aunque éstas podrán determinar sus propias normas siempre y cuando superen los mínimos previstos en el citado código. (El País, 27 October 2004)

The 'green' compounds

The colour green is traditionally associated in all five languages to inexperience in youth or to the early stages of something. The ever-increasing number of 'green' compounds related to nature and the environment, such as green jobs or green energy, is clearly a global phenomenon and a relatively new one in the long history of these languages.

Green shoots is even a more recent idiomatic compound in English, having been used to designate the first symptoms of economic recovery after the world financial crisis of 2008.

The deluge of information from all media concerning this world economic crisis brought about the overuse of the expression the bubble bursts and of all its imaginable lexico-syntactic variants and also the springing of green shoots to refer to the first signals of a budding economic recovery (Martí Solano 2012a: 139). This idiom (or rather its loan translation), that has spread like wildfire, epitomizes what has been called 'mass media intertextuality' or 'intertextual phenomena' (Dobrovol'skij & Piirainen, 2006: 34). The calques are Fr. pousses vertes, It. germogli verdi, Po. brotos verdes and Sp. brotes verdes.

(13) Anche il Sol Levante oggi intravvede i suoi "germogli verdi", quei primi segnali premonitori di una ripresa che già sono stati avvertiti negli Stati Uniti scatenando il rialzo delle Borse. (La Repubblica, 30 April 2009) Two different strategies are put into practice concerning the inclusion of an innovative and rather unusual word combination in (13). On the one hand, the compound is framed by square quotes and, on the other hand, it is followed by an explicit explanation of its arcane meaning in the form of the phrase 'quei primi segnali premonitori di una ripresa' (those first budding signs of economic recovery).

At any rate, Green shoots remains the perfect example of a fleeting buzzword, a sort of evanescent metaphor or phraseological shooting star, extremely bright for a very brief period of time and which then disappears in the darkest of nights.

The 'pink' compounds

Pink is a colour generally associated with girls and women but also with gay men, as can be seen in compounds such as the pink pound or the pink dollar. In British politics, this colour has traditionally been connected, sometimes in a rather derogatory way, with the socialist party as illustrated in the following example from the British National Corpus (BNC): ( 14) Who asked you to butt in Nigel? Always so absurdly liberal, not to say egalitarian. We were having a divine party till you came barging in with your pale pink politics. Buzz off back to Fleet Street. (BNC, 1991) Even though the compound pink tide is very well-established in the Anglophone media to refer to the increasing shifting to the left in the politics of Latin American countries, the compound pink wave seems to have a different origin, i.e. a loan translation from the Fr.

vague rose. This is clearly observable in the translation or adaptation of headlines from the international press, as for instance Po. 'Uma onda rosa percorre a Europa' (A pink wave sweeps Europe) or in another headline from Brazil which reads Po. 'Mídia francesa vê 'onda rosa' contra Nicolas Sarkozy' (Frech media sees a pink wave against Nicolas Sarkozy). In

The New York Times the compound pink wave appears always between inverted commas and is to be found in this sense exclusively in the context of French politics. When contrasting and examining these two compounds one can observe a process of contextual phraseological selection, by which both pink tide and pink wave, though synonymous or quasi-synonymous in theory, become pragmatically different and contextually selective.

Conclusions

Several conclusions can be drawn from the preceding data but we would like to highlight the fact that although calques can be found in all four Romance languages and for nearly all the compounds analysed, the range of frequency and institutionalisation is extremely varied. To give just one example, the French calque of white elephant, éléphant blanc, is recorded in the Le Nouveau Petit Robert 2009 with the geographic label région Canada, which certainly shows the influence of American English on Canadian French in this particular phraseological field. Other expressions such as Fr. trou noir, It. buco nero, Po. buraco negro or Sp. agujero negro or Fr. zone grise, It. zona grigia, Po. zona cinzenta and Sp. zona gris are not recorded with their calqued idiomatic sense in any of the dictionaries consulted, bearing out the fact that semantic borrowings are harder and take longer to be nativised and therefore recorded in lexicographical works. To compensate for the introduction of idiomatic calques, some metalinguistic strategies can be put into action. Their degree of novelty is signalled by the use of inverted commas, by an explicit reference to its context of use or by the use of all sorts of explanations, definitions or other linguistic formulas. As far as frequency of use is concerned, the most recurrent calques appear to be the different renderings of black hole and whitecollar, whereas the least recurrent are clearly the different renderings of yellow press, green shoots and white elephant.

  figuratively in the phrase C'est le trou noir to indicate a situation of deep unhappiness or depression. The 2009 edition of the LPR 7 only registers these two senses. The sense that the compound has acquired in English as "an imaginary place in which things are lost" has been calqued in French […] (Martí Solano 2012b: 206)

  designate white-collar workers in the Romance languages. Its use is extremely wellestablished and more or less widespread depending on the language. High numbers of occurrences have been found in different newspaper archives-the Italian plural colletti bianchi (white-collar workers) has yielded 247 hits in the online archives of the national daily La Repubblica (27/06/12). (2) De leurs côtés, les avocats de ces « cols blancs » qui contestent toutes opérations de blanchiment concèdent seulement qu'ils pourraient s'être rendus coupables de fraude fiscale. Ce qui resterait, selon eux, à prouver. (Le Figaro, 16 October 2012) (3) Alle spalle c'è la delega che esclude dal voto chi ha subito condanne definitive a partire da due anni per reati gravissimi come mafia e terrorismo e per quelli dei colletti bianchi. (La Repubblica, 9 November 2012) (4) Há uns anos era praticamente impossível ter 'colarinhos brancos' sentados no banco dos réus. Os tempos mudaram: hoje há um vasto número de altos quadros sob investigação, mas a Justiça continua lenta, a funcionar a conta-gotas. (O Expresso, 20 April 2010)(5) Las manifestaciones de los cuellos blancos son excepcionales y es la más importante desde 1987, el año de apertura democrática de Corea del Sur. Ello da muestra del rechazo a la reforma laboral, cuya principal medida es la ampliación de la semana laboral a 57 horas y el despido libre.(El País, 15 January 1997)

( 6 )

 6 Après quelques modifications apportées par le Sénat, les députés se sont accordés ce jeudi 19 janvier sur le cadre juridique des quelque 500.000 ouvrages composant la fameuse « zone grise ». (Le Nouvel Observateur, 20 January 2012) (7) In quanto tale servirà ad evidenziare in maniera inequivocabile la differenza tra ciò che merita di essere incoraggiato e finanziariamente sostenuto e ciò che invece rientra in quella zona grigia nella quale le risorse si disperdono in mille rivoli [...] (La Repubblica, 20 October 2012) (8) Entre as razões alegadas para a vinda deste serviço para o concelho encontra-se o facto de Leiria ficar numa espécie de zona cinzenta em termos de cobertura, entre Coimbra, Tomar e Lisboa, impedindo assim um eficaz combate da criminalidade. (Corpus do português, 12 September 1997) (9) Sucede, sin embargo, que la acampada de Sol y otras ciudades acabaron situadas en una zona gris de la legalidad durante la jornada de reflexión antes de las elecciones municipales. (El País, 20 June 2011)

the

  English and the French examples below: (10) Mr Blair says he will insist on his red lines. […] We can therefore have no confidence in Mr Blair's red lines. Can anyone believe he will veto the constitution if he fails to protect his red lines? (The Telegraph, 17 October 2003) (11) Le constructeur automobile Renault, susceptible de produire sa Clio IV en Turquie, ne doit pas dépasser une « ligne rouge », à savoir ne faire « aucune fermeture de site, aucun licenciement » en France, a déclaré mardi 12 février le secrétaire d'Etat à l'Emploi Laurent Wauquiez. (Le Nouvel Observateur, 12 January 2010) Examples of this particular use can be found in the four languages corresponding to the verb phrase cross the red line as in Fr. franchir la ligne rouge, It. varcare la linea rossa, Po. cruzar 10 The first occurrence of this combination registered by the OED dates back to 1900 and appeared in the New York Journal as 'Children of the 'red light district''. 11 The Dictionnaire culturel en langue française (DCLF) registers the following expression, extremely close in meaning to red line and occurring in the same lexico-grammatical frame: 'Loc. fig. Franchir la ligne jaune (blanche) : être en infraction, entrer dans l'illégalité.'

The abbreviation FEI stands for 'fixed expressions and idiom'.

Even though the colour white is usually associated with positive or very positive things, certain combinations such as white elephant or white feather have clearly developed a negative undertone(Bennett & Bennett 1981: 24).

Here are the definitions of these borrowings in the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary (CALD): carte blanche ('complete freedom to do something') and éminence grise ('someone without an official position who has power or influence over rulers or people who make decisions'). English has both eminence grise and grey eminence. The calque seems to be less widely used than the direct loan if we consider the total number of tokens of the former, 15, and of the latter, 26, in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA).

The equivalent native phrase free hand is to be regularly found in exactly the same syntactic frame, which accounts for both semantic and syntactic synonymy. However, a search carried out in the online archives of The New York Times has shown that the number of hits of the target combination a free hand to approximately doubles that of carte blanche to(34,800 vs 17,800).

After the definition, the lexicographer includes an information box where one can read '[…] the phrase is now used in aviation specifically to refer to the flight recorder', which accentuates even more its non-figurative sense.

The first sense is defined as 'Poro de la piel que debe este color a la acumulación de grasa y suciedad' and the second one as 'Aquello que resulta negativo, conflictivo o peligroso'.

The abbreviation of the French dictionary Le Petit Robert.

The Trésor de la langue française informatisé (TLFI) registers and gives a definition of the French calque col blanc and provides an example from 1963.

of Common Figurative Units. New York: Peter Lang. REY, Alain/CHANTREAU, Sophie, 2002: Dictionnaire des expressions et locutions. Paris: Le Robert. REY-DEBOVE, Josette/REY, Alain, 2009: Le nouveau Petit Robert. Paris: Le Robert. The Guardian: < http://www.guardian.co.uk/>. (Access 01. 06. 2012) The New York Times: <http://www.nytimes.com/>. (Access 01. 06. 2012) The Telegraph: <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/>. (Access 01. 06. 2012)