Polysemy and the lexicon
Encroaching idiomaticity: over again
If it is true that language use is riddled with idioms, of various kinds, the question of how many different meanings a word has may not be a legitimate thing to ask. What we should be concerned with is not the meanings of a word as such, but the uses of a word, in various kinds of linguistic context. For an illustration of this, we need go no further than the example of over.
There is general agreement that, of the various senses of over, one has to do with a trajector covering, or occluding, a landmark. Lakoff cites the following examples:
(1) a. She spread the tablecloth over the table. (Lakoff 1987: 419)
b. The board is over the hole. (Lakoff 1987: 427)
Here, the trajector is “at least two-dimensional and extends across the boundaries of the [landmark]” (p. 426), a view endorsed by Tyler and Evans (2001), who note that the trajector is “larger, or perceived to be larger than the [landmark]”, such that the trajector “physically intervene[s] between the viewer and the [landmark]”, thereby obscuring the landmark from view (p. 752).
Here are some examples of the covering sense of over, taken from the British National Corpus (BNC):5
(2) a. I held my hand over my face for a few moments before speaking.
b. His black trousers were held together by safety-pins, paperclips and needles. Over this he had a black mackintosh; there were five belts strapped around his waist and a sort of grey linen nappy attached to the back of his trousers.
c. Tugging her jeans over her thighs, she said: “ …
d. She folded her scarf over her blonde hair.
It will be noted, to begin with, that none of these examples exhibits the covering sense with the pristine clarity of Lakoff’s (invented) examples (nor, it might be added, of the invented examples which other scholars, such as Tyler and Evans 2001, and Deane 2005, have cited in this connection). There are, moreover, some subtle differences between the uses in (2). In (a) the idea seems to be that the trajector (a hand) partially obscures the landmark (a face)– partially, because a hand is smaller than a face and cannot fully obscure the face from view. In (b), the mackintosh is a large, outer garment, which wraps around other clothing, such as the trousers and the belts, and hides them from view. In (c), the trajector is moved into a position which covers the landmark, though not with the idea of obscuring it, but rather of enclosing it, and adapting to its shape. In (d), the relevant point seems to be the positioning of the scarf, rather than the obscuring of the hair.
Rather than dwelling on the covering sense of over– which, to be sure, would merit a much closer examination than what it has been accorded in the already voluminous literature on the word– I want to move on to the use of over in a larger expression. Some 4.2% of all uses of over in the BNC occur in the phrase all over. Here are some examples:
(3) a. More often because of his impatience, it blew back in his face, dusting him all over.
b. Lamarr jumped back dropping the broken pieces and with blood all over his hand and face.
c. She’s got the dress on and she’s taken her hat off so her hair’s all over her shoulders.
d. I still weigh 66 kilos and still have a galaxy of spots around my nose and all over my chin.
e. Oh, God, I thought, she can see the lipstick all over me.
f. She was trembling all over, holding on to the car door for support, despising herself for her own weakness.
All over is commonly analyzed as a variant of “covering” over. Here, I want to raise the question of the contribution of all. An obvious answer, and one consistent with the compositionality principle, would be that all has a quantificational sense, in that the coverage, or occlusion, is total. The meaning of all over, therefore, would be a function of the covering meaning of over in combination with the quantifying meaning of all (La koff 1987: 428). There are several problems with this account.
(i) All is not readily omitted in some of the examples with all over, suggesting that all over functions as a unit:
(4) a. *It blew back in his face, dusting him over.
b. *Oh, God, I thought, she can see the lipstick over me.
(ii) Equally, over, in (2), can often not be quantified with all:
(5) a. * I held my hand all over my face for a few moments before speak ing.
b. *Tugging her jeans all over her thighs, she said: “ …
c. *She folded her scarf all over her blonde hair.
Note, in connection with (5a), that the strangeness of the sentence is not due to the factual impossibility of a hand covering all of a person’s face. I held both my hands all over my face (thereby totally obscuring my face) is equally bizarre.
(iii) All does not readily contrast with other quantifying expressions, such as half, partly, somewhat, mostly, etc.
(6) *Oh, God, I thought, she can see the lipstick {half, partly, somewhat, mostly} over me.
The oddness of half over, in this example, in not due to the impossibility of the expression per se. There are 32 occurrences of half over in the BNC (as against 5479 occurrences of all over). Here are some examples:
(7) a. She pulled the sheet half over her head, to be ready to jump out, and she waited.
b. Maggie looked up, peering at him, the towel like a white tent over her head, her long hair half over his face.
c. Meredith, stranded inelegantly with a foot on the wooden step and the other leg half over the topmost bar, said crossly, “I can’t see it.”
d. Allain moved until his body was half over her.
Here, some notion of quantification does seem to be involved. Half can be replaced by partly, it can be omitted without too much of a strain on acceptability, and even, in the case of (7b), it might be replaced by all. But if quantification is involved– and to this extent, half over displays a greater degree of compositionality than all over– the question arises as to what, exactly, is being quantified. In (7a) it is presumably the head which is only half obscured by the sheet, rather than half of the sheet covering (all of) the head. In (7c), however, it is presumably only half the leg which is over the bar, rather than the whole leg being over half the bar. (The example, of course, invokes, not the covering sense of over, but has to do with the trajector being positioned on the topmost part of the landmark.) The vagueness with respect to what is being quantified is apparent in (8), which is based in (3c):
(8) She’s got the dress on and she’s taken her hat off so her hair’s {all / half / partly / somewhat} over her shoulders.
Consider, in this light, example (3d), repeated below as (9):
(9) I still weigh 66 kilos and still have a galaxy of spots around my nose and all over my chin.
Is it the case that all of the trajector is over the landmark, or that the trajector covers all of the landmark? The context in (9) makes it clear that at least some of the spots are around the nose, so it cannot be the case that all of the spots are on the chin. We would have to assume that there are spots on all of the chin. But what does this relation between spots and chin involve? It is not a relation of “covering”, in the sense that the two-dimensional extension of the trajectory (“the spots”) exceeds that of the landmark (“the chin”), such that the chin is obscured from view. Rather, it has to do with the dense distribution of a large number of spots on the chin, such that an observer can see the chin, with a large number of spots on it.
(iv) If we accept Lakoff’s characterization of the covering sense of over, namely, as involving a trajector which extends across the boundaries of the landmark (Lakoff 1987: 426), all in its quantifying sense would be redundant, since, on its covering sense, over clearly requires that all of the landmark is fully “covered” by the trajector. Neither would it make much sense to claim that it is the trajector that is being quantified. If the trajector fully “covers” the landmark, it would be irrelevant whether all, or only part, of the trajector is in the covering relation.
(v) The major objection to the compositional account of all over, however, is that “covering”, whether quantified or not, is hardly the appropriate way to characterize the examples in (3). In fact, the examples in (3) do not exhibit a covering relation at all, in the strict sense that the trajector occludes the landmark. Rather, as suggested above, what unifies the examples is some notion of the distribution, or dispersal of the trajector entity within the boundary of the landmark, or, in the case of (3f), with the manifestation of a process at different places on the landmark. The point has been developed by Queller (2001: 58), who drew attention to the following contrast:
(10) a. This tablecloth has got bloodstains all over it.
b. ?? This tablecloth has got red squares all over it.
According to Queller, example (10b) is unacceptable because the red squares are a design feature of the tablecloth. Sentence (10a), in contrast, is fine, and has to do with the random dispersal of the stains on the surface of the cloth, whereby, as noted above, the stains, as a mass, do not strictly “cover” the landmark– a point also acknowledged by Lakoff (1987: 428). Moreover, the stains are perceived as being an unwanted imperfection on the cloth, or, at least, a temporary blemish. If we now go back to examine the examples in (3), we note that the idea of random distribution, in association with temporary blemish or dishevelment, applies in all cases.
What this means, I think, is that the semantic value of all over cannot be computed compositionally, from one of the meanings (the covering meaning) of over, in association with all. All over would have the status of an idiomatic expression. As such, it has its own specific conditions of use. In this connection, it is interesting to take note of a property which is shared by all of the BNC examples with all over cited above and which distinguishes these examples from the invented sentences in (1). This is, that the attested examples all make reference to the human body, or parts of it, either as trajector or as landmark, or as both, or, in the case of (2b), to an article of clothing located on a human body. As far as I am aware, this distinctive feature of the “dispersal” sense of all over has not previously been commented upon, and further corpus research would be needed in order to substantiate the association. If substantiated, this property would contribute to what Stubbs (1995) has referred to as the “semantic profile” of the expression. The expression, to be sure, has other semantic profiles. Particularly prominent are uses of all over which have a geopolitical entity as the landmark.
(11) a. Why are managers from all over Britain and sometimes even from abroad, even from Japan, attracted to start industries on these trading estates?
b. People must be hunting all over the country for him.
c. Police all over the country are known to want the DNA register.
d. Pietro Metastasio (whose texts were set to music all over Europe by the best composers of the time)
e. The worship of, of professed belief in, a god of some kind is to be found in varying degrees of sincerity all over the world.
The discovery that all over functions as a unit, with its own distinctive semantic value(s), may not, in itself, be all that remarkable. The matter becomes more interesting, however, when we realize that this process of “idiomaticization” is recursive. Just as over combines with all to give an expression with its own distinctive and idiomatic value(s), so all over can combine with other items to produce expressions which also have their distinctive values.
As many as 8.6% of all occurrences of all over in the BNC are in the context all over the place. The “place” in question is not specified precisely.
(12) a. Why somebody’s left an old choc-ice on the floor, and it’s run all over the place.
b. Although Shaker has become fashionable and “Shaker style” furniture is appearing all over the place, very little of it bears much relation to the real thing.
c. We started using it and interestingly enough that typeface is really popular now, you see it in the United States everywhere, it’s all over the place.
d. There is no way that a farrier can shoe a horse that is so angry or frightened that it is rearing and leaping all over the place.
In (12a-c), all over the place conveys that the designated process is manifested at numerous places (within a contextually defined region); everywhere (= ‘at all places within the defined region’) offers itself as a suitable (though perhaps hyperbolic) paraphrase. Substitution with everywhere would not be possible in (12d), however. Here, the idea is that the activity (“rearing and leaping”) is taking place in a random and unpredictable manner. This notion is exploited in the following:
(13) Yesterday’s polls looked much of a muchness– they were not “all over the place”– but concealed politically crucial variations.
If the results of an opinion poll– or any other set of data, for that matter are “all over the place”, the idea is that there is no obvious trend; that data points appear to be random and show no clear pattern. A specialization of this idea is exemplified by the following (from Queller 2001: 62):
(14) a. This paper is all over the place.
b. You are all over the place.
In saying (14a) to a student, the instructor conveys that the essay lacks structure; it jumps, seemingly at random, from one point to another, without an overall plan. If the student is said to be “all over the place” (14b), the idea, again, is that the student’s work, or thought processes, lack di rection and coherence.
At this point, it may be well to recall the earlier citation from Jackendoff. Jackendoff presented the standard argument for the diction ary + grammar book model of language. This has to do with the fact of linguistic creativity. The fact that speakers are constantly creating novel sentences means that speakers to do not learn sentences, they learn the principles by which sentences can be generated. It follows– so the argument goes– that speakers need to learn a (finite) set of meaning-bearing units (the words) and a finite set of rules for combining the words. Idioms, being non-compositional, would constitute a non-essential supplement to the lexicon and the syntax. This view, however, ignores the fact that idioms can also be used “creatively”. The usage range of an idiom can be extended to new contexts (as when all over the place is extended from its more basic meaning “everywhere” to conveying random distribution or directionless behavior). Alternatively, the “slots” in an idiom can be filled by different lexical items. And, indeed, there exist a number of variants of all over the place; these include all over the show, all over the shop, and all over the map.
All over the show occurs three times in the BNC; in none of these is a “show” (in the “basic”, literal sense of the word) implicated:
(15) a. Squealing and squawking and leaving its dirty nappies all over the show.
b. Speaking of Deano– everyone I talked felt that as we had paid £2.7 million for a center forward wouldn’t it be nice if hung around near the goal or in the box for that matter instead of running all over the show and when we finally get the ball in the box there’s no body there.
c. My legs were all over the show and I’ve got to stand tall tomorrow.
The first example can be paraphrased by everywhere, while the second conveys running in random directions, without purpose. The third elaborates on a specific case of random behavior, namely, that the person did not have control over the movements of his/her legs.
All over the shop is attested 9 times. The first example below aligns itself with those uses of all over which take a geopolitical entity as its landmark, while the second is a variation on the theme of random, directionless activity. Neither of the examples involves reference to “a shop”.
(16) a. Wisely cautious at first –; awed, probably, by sheer numbers (because they were coming in, now, from all over the shop, from Canada, from Palestine) –; German society duly broadened itself to let the newcomers in
b. The movie’s dilemma is that its luxurious pace ambles all over the shop, never really getting anywhere or bringing any of the characters to a satisfying conclusion
All over the map is attested only twice in the BNC. The first example involves, literally, places on “a map” of a terrain. The second, however, refers again to the random distribution of data.
(17) a. In the east and center of the county we find a close network of narrow, winding lanes, wandering from hamlet to hamlet and farm to farm, churches standing alone, isolated houses dotted all over the map, many of them called Hall or Old Hall –; significant names
b. Er what I have chosen to do is to do what we were doing in the nineteen eighties, which is to take the simplest measure of the maximum flow and the detrusor pressure at that volume and when we do that, you can see that these patients, instead of being a single group of patients with a single kind of bladder pressure and flow, these patients are all over the map.
Google returned over 1.3 million hits for all over the map– the figure no doubt inflated by the existence of an atlas of that name. The following, however, clearly elaborate on the idea of random distribution, or directionless behavior.
(18) a. When it comes to “interests,” I am all over the map. I read and enjoy all genres of novels, but most of my reading is nonfiction.
b. I am all over the map these days. I can’t seem to settle into one project.
c. Bond Yields in the Euro Zone Are All Over the Map.
d. The next largest group comes from what he called “New Age” cults, whose belief systems are all over the map.
A particularly interesting variant is all over the paddock (not attested in the BNC). This appears to be a peculiarly Australasian expression, paddock, in Australian and New Zealand English, corresponding to standard English field, meadow. Google searching suggests that the expression may be (or may have been) specifically associated with the behavior of players on a rugby field:
(19) a. This set the tone for the rest of the game with tries being ran in from all over the paddock against a side which battled bravely.
b. It was the sort of thing the big men hate to see and no one was bigger on the night than Springbok lock Botha who was all over the paddock.
c. The determined and dogged Irish weren’t giving up and had the Aussies running ragged all over the paddock
d. We had them all over the paddock, particularly our ruckman LS Craig … We had winners like LSPT Robert Tarjani all over the paddock.
e. The Welsh scrum didn’t push the Wallabies all over the paddock because they were a set of England-style behemoths, it was because they were better coached.
Not surprisingly, all over the paddock has uses which have nothing to do with a “paddock”, or rugby field. In fact, I first noticed this expression in a commentary on the 2005 general election in New Zealand, where it was stated that the initial election results were “all over the paddock”. This usage is clearly a variation on the one cited in (13). In contrast, the following, from a New Zealand politician’s weblog, retains the image of the paddock (or rugby field), fusing it with the notion of the Prime Minister randomly changing her account in response to the news channel’s persistent questioning.
(20) I remember when TV One chased Prime Minister Jenny Shipley all over the paddock over whether she had discussed politics when having dinner with Saatchi chief Kevin Roberts.
All over enters into another set of idiomatic expressions. About 1% of all uses of all over in the BNC occur in the context written all over. Consider, first, the following example.
(21) My partner for the event was the marvellous American player Muffin Spencer-Devlin, who turned up with a bag which had “Save the Whales” written all over it.
There is no suggestion, here, that all of the bag’s (outer) surface was covered by the inscription (this would be a nonsense, anyway), nor that the lettering was randomly displayed on the bag’s surface (though it could be the case that “Save the Whales” was inscribed more than once on the bag). The idea, instead, is that the wording “Save the Whales” was prominently displayed on the bag, visible to any observer.
Of special interest are cases in which there is no literal “writing” on a surface; rather, what seems to be involved are certain features of an entity which are salient to any observer. The following (BNC) examples elaborate on the idea that the prominent feature is (literally) “inscribed” on the entity.
(22) a. Glazed, red-rimmed, they stare off into some distant past that has mid-1980s written all over it.
b. And it’s got faulty written all over the box, you know.
In the following, the entity bears the name of its author (or instigator):
(23) a. Dave’s rhythm work has got his name written all over it.
b. This has Paul written all over it.
Zooming in still further on the idiomatic, we find expressions in which the “writing” is located on a person’s face, this making the person’s thoughts or emotional state apparent to an observer. The inscription may even take the form of a quoted expression (24b):
(24) a. He shook his head, doubt written all over his face
b. “Mr Kopek, I didn’t know you had it in you”, was the phrase I could see written all over her expression.
Queller proposes that written all over (one’s face) is associated with the unintentional expression of emotion, pointing out that the phrase is more likely to be used of guilt and disappointment, which a person might prefer to keep hidden, than of rage or pleasure, which a person freely expresses. He (2002: 57) glosses the phrase as “someone’s attempt to present a ‘front’ of composure or nonchalance is being ‘messed up’ by an unconscious or reflexive dispersal of emotion over his/her face”. While some BNC examples, such as (25a), might conform with this account, others, e.g. (25b), don’t.
(25) a. Though Jackson was the first to congratulate Olympic champion McKoy, the disappointment was written all over his face.
b. As William and Harry boarded the 10.30am BA flight, excitement was written all over their faces.
There is no reason to suppose, in (25b), that William and Harry would want to hide their excitement behind an expression of composure or non-chalance. These examples, rather, all elaborate on the notion of THE FACE AS INTERFACE. A person’s face is where emotions and intentions are made manifest, and where they can be “read” by others. This conceptualization of the face is prominent in the following (Googled) examples:
(26) a. He approaches slowly, anxiety visible all over his face.
b. The Conductor was sitting with satisfaction clearly visible all over his face
c. Connor peers at him, disgust legible all over his face.
d. the agony was prominent all over his face as was the disappointment.
I mentioned above the possibility of the idioms being creatively extended. Google searching discovered numerous variations on the expression written all over (one’s) face. Here is a small sample:
(27) a. Frustration was scrawled all over his face.
b. This is a comic, then, who walks on stage with “please like me” scrawled all over his face.
c. Mr Eun glanced at the half-empty classroom, and then back at me, the usual “kids these-days” look scribbled all over his face.
d. He leant over with compassion printed all over his face in italic type.
e. The man has “rising star” printed all over his face.
f. arrogance inscribed all over his face
g. “I can’t believe it,” he moaned, betrayal stamped all over his face.
h. His love of life was stamped all over his face.
i. Selariu dragged himself up to complete his routine but his disappointment was etched all over his face.
j. The delight is visibly etched all over his face.
k. Gourry looks down at me, confusion etched all over his face.
l. Simon looked up from his computer screen, irritation engraved all over his face.
m. The Source? Simple. It’s Dan Rather’s daughter. It was typed all over his face when he “defended” the story Friday.
n. Zainab looked up at her mother, helplessness portrayed all over her face.
o. with a terrifying earnestness pictured all over my face
p. Contempt was depicted all over his face
It would, I think, be futile to approach these examples enquiring which sense of over (or, indeed, which sense of all over) is being exemplified. The examples play on the FACE AS INTERFACE metaphor, in association with the entrenched expression (have something) written all over one’s face.6
5. The examples were generated using the “Simple Search” facility of the British National Corpus. This facility returns a maximum of 50 randomly selected instances of the search item.
6. The examples in (27), as well as earlier examples with written all over, would profit from an analysis in terms of conceptual blending (Fauconnier & Turner 2003). This is not explored here, for lack of space.
