Talk:Set phrase

ˡ
What is this weird looking square supposed to denote? &lt;KF&gt; 14:58, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Probably stress, it would probably be rendered correctly with the right font, I think it's IPA. 惑乱 分からん 18:22, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Constructions
Well, I certainly trust linguistics specialists to get this right, but it seems to me I've always seen the term "set phrase" used to refer to constructions that included verbs. Most of the examples here are simply compound nouns.

I apologize that I'm no linguistics expert myself, so I can't speak to English examples. But we often use the term "set phrase" in Japanese class to refer to constructions that always go together - verb, noun, and particle - to produce a set meaning.

For example: Ki (気) can be used in various set phrases to produce set meanings that don't directly relate to the meaning of the words involved.


 * Ki ni naru - to be worrying, to be weighing on one's mind
 * Ki wo tsukeru - to notice
 * Ki wo tsuku - to be careful

Yet, as these are quite normal everyday phrases, and not metaphors like "pulling your leg", they're not really idioms. Again, I apologize that as a native English speaker, I have trouble applying these sorts of linguistics concepts to my own language, and can only provide foreign examples. Thoughts? LordAmeth 18:44, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Clean-up
It's been quite some time since I posted the above comment, and while I've had a very brief conversation with one editor over at WP:Theoretical Linguistics, nothing has come out of it towards actually changing the article. So, here's hoping that some cleanup tags will attract attention.

I'm no linguist, and do not trust myself to be able to accurately represent what this technical jargon term means precisely within the Linguistics context. But I do know just enough to know that set phrases consist of far more than just compound nouns. Egfrank offered the wonderful example of "to put up with" - a phrase made up of several words, with a new meaning not intrinsic to any one of the parts. This is a far better example of a set phrase than simply a noun which has been modified.

Please, won't someone help this poor, misguided, article!? LordAmeth (talk) 00:27, 3 February 2008 (UTC)


 * "to put up with" is a phrasal verb, not a set phrase. A set phrase is immutable in it's form and meaning. Many of the examples are awful.Irbisgreif (talk) 10:12, 28 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The article needs to define how "set phrases" differ from "institutional utterances", from "idioms", from "lexical units", "phrasal verbs", "collocations", and so on. User:Linas 22:42, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

(Teacher's) Tone
The introduction reads decently at first, but continues to have more of a socratic tone. This really isn't good for an encyclopedia article. Rather than trying to present this as a teacher might, editors should aim for simple clarity. Compare the linked article markedness. Examples are fine, but questions to the reader to be avoided. Ace Class Shadow; My talk. 03:24, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I have edited the article per your suggestions; is this enough to resolve the WP:TONE issue? NoDepositNoReturn (talk) 22:28, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Beyond repair
I suggest that this article be simply deleted. For three reasons: Firstly I suggest that the title "set phrase" is not a name for a _topic_, certainly not a wellknown name of a notable topic _in linguistics_. Secondly I think the article's quality is quite inadequate. Thirdly, the combination of non-topic-like title plus content makes the whole more like a dictionary entry (explaining the English term "set phrase") than an entry in an encyclopedia. (Wikipedia is not a dictionary.)

A suitable replacement title might be "(linguistic) idiom" or "idiomaticity", a topic that has been discussed in proper linguistics publications and whose title would match the terminology used in such papers. User:CecilWard.

Listed meaning of "Don't look now" is quite different in American English
I can find no references, but I feel that I must point out that your definition of the set-phrase "Don't look now" might confuse those trying to learn American English. I have heard the set-phrase "Don't look now" carry the meaning of a request, to refrain from visibly reacting to news, of any kind, good or bad, significant or trivial. For example, "Please, do not react with any body language or other signals that might give away that I know something that others do not yet know. So... brace yourself, for I am about to tell you of that news..." Does that make sense? It is possible to use this set-phrase to "warn someone about an imminent misfortune", but that I rarely encountered. In my experience, this set-phrase was most often used to request that one's audience (of one or more people) to not visibly react to any news, good or bad, in order to prevent others, outside of one's clique, from becoming suspicious. 68.35.173.107 (talk) 18:16, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Examples are not good
This page strikes me as being very poor in quality. The examples used show only the most primitive set phrases, and I'm not even sure some of them are. For example, "you know" as two words together is not in itself a set phrase -- and there are no example sentences to illustrate usages of set phrases, which would be critical to understand what they are. This page fails to even scratch the surface of the giant variety and richness of set phrases in English. Thujone33 (talk) 23:14, 28 October 2017 (UTC)Thujone33

Is anyone responsible for this page?
Reading all the ignored talk on this page, and I realize that nobody is responding to the harsh criticism here. Simply, this page is terrible and misleading to anyone who reads it. @LordAmuth I agree with your assessment 100%. Thujone33 (talk) 23:18, 28 October 2017 (UTC)Thujone33

DOES ANYONE GIVE A DAMN ABOUT THIS PUTRID PAGE???
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Thujone33 (talk • contribs) 19:55, 14 November 2017 (UTC)
 * So fix it WP:BOLDly. Klbrain (talk) 21:03, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

Merge proposal
There is a May 2019 proposal to merge Set phrase and Fixed expression, and perhaps the best place might be here (as the older article). Both are short, light on referencing, and cover similar material. Then again, perhaps it might be best to apply WP:TNT and redirect both to Idiom. Klbrain (talk) 21:07, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
 * ✅ Klbrain (talk) 08:38, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 22 April 2021

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

Set phrase → Phraseme – Set phrases basically refers to Phrasemes. Even in the Phraseme page the first sentence is that it is the same thing. Therefore it should be merged. 172.56.17.58 (talk) 19:59, 22 April 2021 (UTC)


 * MERGE but DON'T MOVE I certainly agree that we need to unify and systematize our coverage of idioms. Right now, we have this (not very good) article; the article phraseme, which is more complete and better written, but overly technical; and the article idiom, which . They overlap but don't really cover the field well.
 * Our goal should be to have one summary article that puts narrower, more technical articles in context. That summary article should have a widely-understood, non-technical title, probably "idiom", "fixed phrase", or "set phrase". The title phraseme is more technical, and would be suitable for a discussion of theoretical approaches in linguistics. I don't think it's suitable for the overview article. -Macrakis (talk) 20:25, 22 April 2021 (UTC)


 * User:Macrakis So you want this article to be merged with idiom rather than phraseme? There is also phrase I think merging this article with phrase is a better idea 172.56.17.58 (talk) 21:51, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Phrase covers two very distinct concepts, and articles should be about one concept:
 * A complete grammatical unit, like the prepositional phrase "in the street" in the sentence "I saw a squirrel in the street", where "saw a" and "in the" are not phrases.
 * An idiomatic or common expression, possibly with a special meaning.
 * I don't think most readers will understand an article entitled just "phrase" as being about idiomatic phrases. "Idiom" seems much clearer. --Macrakis (talk) 22:22, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
 * User:Macrakis So you're saying the phrase article should be split into two, with one of the article being this article? 172.56.17.58 (talk) 22:48, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm saying that the material about idiomatic phrases should be migrated from the phrase article to whatever article we decide should cover idiomatic phrases, probably idiom, which is where idiomatic phrase already redirects. This article could probably also be merged into the idiom article. --Macrakis (talk) 02:38, 23 April 2021 (UTC)
 * User:Macrakis So consensus is reached, merge the content of this article with phrase and idiom. And redirect this article to phrase. Right? 172.56.17.58 (talk) 18:49, 23 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Not exactly.
 * Idiom: The article on idiomatic phrases, set phrases, idioms etc. is idiom. I am not sure that there is anything in this article that is worth moving, but if there is, it belongs in idiom.
 * Phrase: This is the article about the linguistic concept of a phrase. There is nothing in this article that is relevant to that article.
 * Phraseme is about the theoretical linguistic construct. The more technical linguistics parts of idiom can go here.
 * This article will then redirect to idiom.
 * Do we agree? --Macrakis (talk) 19:06, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Merge to Phrase article
User:Macrakis So from my understanding set/fixed phrases also refers to non idiomatic phrases also know as cliches. Principle of compositionally doesn't have to be violated. Is this not correct? 172.56.17.58 (talk) 19:44, 23 April 2021 (UTC)
 * The term "set phrase" probably has a variety of different definitions. I would guess that some writers use it to mean an idiom (whose meaning can't be derived from its parts) and others use it to mean any collocation or phraseme. Remember that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a dictionary, so we organize articles not by the names of things, but by the concepts. --Macrakis (talk) 19:06, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Four months having elapsed, I'm removing the merge to template from the article; it's pretty obvious that Set phrase should eventually be converted into a disambiguation page. In the meantime, anyone's free to WP:BOLDly do with it as they see fit. 78.28.44.31 (talk) 14:45, 15 August 2021 (UTC)