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Phraseology. A question to native speakers of English Could you please some examples of different changes in phraseological units that have already become quite common and usual? Changes in structure, grammar, lexis and so on. For ex, an idiom 'to give sb the cold sholder'. In the context it can be used in different forms: 'She rekindled a friendship with a neighbor with whom she had maintained a cold-shoulder dispute over a childrearing incident that occurred eight years earlier.' 'They didn’t want to return to the door-slamming and cold shoulders of their original divorce proceedings.' 'However, getting fired from your job or cold-shouldered by a group of acquaintances hardly means getting thrown down a volcano.' So, I'm looking for changes in structure, because the meaning is always the same. Thanks in advance!
Nov 3, 2016 12:01 PM
Answers · 9
1
I'm afraid we do not use the expression "to cold shoulder somebody," in the way you have done in either of your first two sentences. "Cold shouldered," as in sentence three is correct although I suspect that being 'thrown down a volcano,' might be something that you have translated from your native language, because it is not an expression that we use here, even if the meaning of your sentence is clear enough.
November 3, 2016
What a thoroughly helpful chap.
November 3, 2016
The first and last ones are very odd. They aren't native-like in the least. While I've not checked this database I can think of at least one problem with resources of this sort...there is no way to know if a native speaker contributed the material cited.
November 3, 2016
Corpora are lexical databases where you can trace the occurance of the word or phrase you are interested in in different context. These databases provides numerous examples from British and American massmedia sources and so on. Which passage exactly is not correct? I will check the source.
November 3, 2016
This passage was clearly written by a non-native speaker.
November 3, 2016
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