Semantic productivity and idiom comprehension
Year: 1994
Type: article
Abstract: When people understand an idiom such as “spill the beans,” two kinds of meaning are simultaneously apprehended: the meanings of the words themselves and the idiomatic meaning. Standard models of language comprehension assume that the literal meanings of figurative expressions are rejected in favor of a nonliteral meaning. We propose an alternative approach in which literal meanings are systematically used to constrain the use and variation of conventional idioms and to generate novel idiom variants.
Source: Discourse Processes
Institutions: Princeton University, University of Bologna
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2053415459