The nature of fixed language in the subtitling of a documentary film

Table 1. Summary of different proposals for free and non-free word combinations. 
Authors 
Free lexical combinations 
Non-free lexical combinations 
Coseriu (1977) 
Discourse technique 
Repeated discourse 
Pottier 
(1978) 
and 
Fonseca (1981) 
Simple lexia 
Complex lexia 
Herculano de Carvalho 
(1979) 
Sintagma livre (Free phrase) 
Sintagma fixo (Fixed phrase) 
Lyons (1995) 
Lexically 
composite 
phrasal 
expressions 
Lexically simple phrasal expressions 
Sinclair (1995) 
Open choice principle 
Idiom principle 
Mel’čuk 
Free phrases 
Set phrases or phrasemes 
Bosque 
& 
Demonte 
(2000) 
Non-phrasal lexemes 
Phrasal 
lexemes 
or 
syntagmatic 
compounds 
Even Saussure (1992: 210-211) recognizes that it is extremely difficult to say 
what a free combination of words is, to distinguish between a language fact, which 
results from a collective use, and a speech act, which is dependent on the free will of a 
speaker. Lyons (1995: 52) corroborates this idea, by stating that the frontier between 
composite phrasal expressions, created by a process of grammaticalization, and simple 
phrasal expressions or lexicalized expressions, is not as straightforward as it appears. 
For Lyons (1985: 145), not all lexemes correspond to a single word, because we 
can find numerous phrasal lexemes 
(or ‘syntagmatic compounds’, according to Bosque 
& Demonte 2000) in any language, “lexemes whose forms are phrases, in the traditional 
sense of the word” (Lyons 1985: 145). These phrasal lexemes tend to be grammatically 
or semantically idiomatic, because their distribution in sentences or their meaning is not 
predictable from the syntactic or semantic characteristics of their parts (e.g. red herring). 
When a phrasal lexeme has a non-phrasal lexeme as its equivalent, we say that the 
former has an idiomatic, metaphorical or figurative meaning, whereas the latter bears a 

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literal meaning. However, Lyons (1985: 146) believes that there is no generally 
accepted criterion to distinguish these phrasal lexemes from clichés or fixed 
collocations. 
Another author, Carvalho (1979: 495-496) refers to a gradation between phrase 
and word which are distinguished in three levels: a free phrase, a fixed phrase and a 
compound word
. A fixed phrase is defined as “uma associação de palavras em 
sequência fixa, que constitui uma unidade sintáctica perfeita (...) e também muitas vezes 
semântica (...) e morfológica”. Therefore, the difference between a fixed phrase and a 
free phrase is that the former means a simple concept and its sense is non-
compositional, whereas the latter signifies a complex one and is usually compositional. 
Apart from this, fixed phrases are also characterized by: the rigid order of their 
elements; the impossibility to change them; the possibility of belonging to different 
word classes; the reduced inflectional variation; the likelihood of having abnormal 
syntactic constructions; the syntactic functioning as a word only; and the integration 
within a paradigmatic lexical structure. Nevertheless, distinguishing between a fixed 
phrase and a compound is even harder, since a compound can have only one stressed 
syllable and may be made up of bound forms. 
On the other hand, Pottier (1978 269-270) refers to three types of lexias: the 
simple lexia, the compound lexia (equivalent to a compound) and the complex lexia 
(e.g. cold war); apart from these, he also refers to textual lexias, such as proverbs. This 
author establishes criteria for identifying lexias, though considering them to be 
insufficient, which are: the lack of autonomy of their elements, the impossibility of 
partially recovering their reference, of replacement and of separation of an element, and 
the absence of determination. 
Similarly, Fonseca (1981: 90-97) also follows this perspective, speaking of 
simple, compound and complex lexias: the first ones match those inseparable 
morphemes, while the other two will correspond to lexical and syntagmatic compounds, 
respectively, mentioned further on. Hence, complex lexias are units learned by heart as