Thursday, January 13, 2011  Idioms and By-Phrases  Idioms have
frequently been used to argue for transformational accounts of
certain syntactic phenomena. For instance, the fact that part of
an idiom can undergo raising is often used to argue for a
movement analysis of raising:  (1) The shit hit the fan. (2) The
shit seems to have hit the fan.  Same for promotion of objects
to subjects in the passive:  (3) Someone spilled the beans. -->
The beans were spilled. (4) She pulled some strings (to get him
hired). --> Some strings were pulled (to get him hired).  It has
also been claimed that idioms argue against a transformational
analysis of the by-phrase in passives, where it is related
transformationally to the active subject, because no subject
that is idiomatic in the active can appear in a by-phrase in the
passive and retain its idiomatic meaning. A note on references
first: This argument is probably a familiar one to most people,
but I have had trouble locating a source for it. Bowers (2010,
11-12) cites Mar