Expressions & Constructions

Question 1

Carry weight

Answer 1

Be influential

1. Dancing with Napaloni’s wife will carry weight - You mean I’ll carry weight.

Question 2

To be germane to sth

Answer 2

Guardar relación con algo

1. But there is no way of determining a priori to what extent the ways currently embraced for describing the representations of computers will prove germane to organisms, be they paramecia or professors.

Question 3

Take someone to task

Answer 3

To scold or reprimand someone

1. St. Paul and Konrad Lorenz have been taken to task for misanthropic moralizing and for logical circularity.

Question 4

Do someone in

Answer 4

Matar a alguien

1. According to psychoanalysis the central preoccupation of childhood is that our parents will decide to do us in.

Question 5

Take stock

Answer 5

Make an overall assessment of a particular situation, typically before making a decission

1. It is quite sobering to take stock of how much of the language used today in serious discussions of the mind is not very different from that of Aristotle.

Question 6

Dispense with

Answer 6

Manage without or get rid of

1. Hertz’s results are still regarded as confirming Maxwell’s theory, but only a rewritten version of it that dispenses with the ether, and treats electric and magnetic fields as real entities in their own right.

Question 7

In the event

Answer 7

As it turns out

1. I’d started off intending to take CTM more or less for granted as the background theory and to concentrate on issues about nativism and adaptationism. But in the event, that turned out not to be feasible.

Question 8

Put your finger on sth.

Answer 8

To discover the exact reason why a situation is the way it is

1. Since we routinely express ideas and feelings in language, we may be forgiven for assigning a role to it, but isn’t it remarkable how often we struggle to find our words? It’s not that we don’t know what we thought or felt, but we just can’t put our verbal finger on it.

Question 9

Of no moment

Answer 9

Sin importancia

1. The details of the process were already discussed in Syntactic Structures, and the process of do-support was offered as a way of regularizing this process. For our purposes here, however, these additional details are of no moment.

Question 10

Trait-d’union

Answer 10

Elemento de conexión

1. Firstly, Slobin acknowledges the importance of the Genevian studies on language acquisition by Sinclair-de Zwart, which form the trait-d’union between the Piagetian and Chomskyan traditions in language acquisition. Secondly, Piaget is apparently referred to as an encyclopedia.

Question 11

Lion’s share

Answer 11

The largest part of sth

1. It seems to me that the lion’s share of these empirical assumptions fall into three categories: (1) the relative unimportance of input, (2) the marginal role of semantics, and (3) the cognitive independence of language.

Question 12

Ever so

Answer 12

Very, very much

1. I shall be ever so glad if you can tell me how the Real World scenario arises.

Question 13

Jump the gun

Answer 13

Act before the appropriate or proper time

1. But aren’t you jumping the gun? So far, we’ve talked about whirlpools and crystals, and then you mentioned star dust and typhoons. It’s quite a different matter to establish that the forms of life emerge from these transitions.

Question 14

Stand to reason

Answer 14

To be a logical or reasonable conclusion or deduction

1. It stands to reason that myriad facts like these may belong to a specific level of linguistic analysis, neither divirced from that of full-blown meanings and concepts, nor assimilable to it.
2. In order to find out what makes us the way we are, it stands to reason that we have to look closely at the way we are.

Question 15

If only because

Answer 15

For no other reason than

1. Needless to say, the next day the Linguist did again take his walk by the Charles, if only because otherwise this story could not continue.

Question 16

Fall foul of

Answer 16

To get into trouble because of failing to do what is required

1. However, the claim that a clause introduced by a complementiser has the status of an S-bar constituent falls foul of the Headedness Principle, which requires that every non-terminal node in a tree to be a projection of a head word.

Question 17

Beg the question

Answer 17

Assume the truth of an argument or proposition to be proved, without arguing it

1. For instance, Roberta Golinkoff and her colleagues discuss Lois Bloom’s position that lexical constraints are the inventions of researchers, not actually mental entities on the part of the child, and they suggest that her view ‘‘begs the question of how children determine the meanings of words without considering a myriad of hypotheses.’’

Question 18

Pay lip service

Answer 18

To appear to support or obey something publicly while actually disregarding it

1. This realization was arrived at independently and formulated together by Tomaso Poggio in Tubingen and myself. It was not even quite new—Leon D. Harmon was saying something similar at about the same time, and others had paid lip service to a similar distinction.

Question 19

Make provision for

Answer 19

Supply what is needed by; take preparatory measures by

1. This elementary mathematical truth is a critical part of our argument as to why the architecture of a powerful computing device such as the brain must make provision for bringing the values of variables to the machinery that implements some primitive two-argument functions.