ABSTRACT
Figurative language has finally become a respectable area of study in the cognitive sciences. Most of the emphasis in this research effort has been on the interpretation of metaphor. However, idiomaticity has recently become a significant topic of concern in psycholinguistics, linguistics, developmental psychology, neuropsychology, and computer science (cf. Cacciari & Tabossi (1993)). This interest in idiomaticity is well founded, given that American English, for example, contains many thousands of formulaic phrases and expressions that the ordinary speaker must somehow learn (as is evident in the many idiom and slang dictionaries currently available).
