Understanding Idioms

We describe a language understanding model in which idioms, like other units of linguistic knowledge, are treated as constructions linking elements of form w ith elements of meaning. They may also, however, in voke additional metaphorical mappings that can actively constrain both the interpretation and acceptability of idiomatic expressions. A wide variety of idiomatic phenomena, including compositional and non-composit ional idioms, syntactic flexibility and modification can be explained within this framework.