SEMANTIC PRODUCTIVITY AND IDIOM COMPREHENSION

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 comp rehension assume that the literal meanings of figurative expressions a re rejected in favor of a nonliteral meaning. We propose an alternativ e approach in which literal meanings are systematically used to constr ain the use and variation of conventional idioms and to generate novel idiom variants.