Idiomatic versus Literal Interpretations Ditropically Ambiguous Sentences Of

"Ditropically" ambiguous sentences (each having both a literal and an idiomatic interpretation) were prepared tbr listener's discrimination judgments, and fbr silent readers' rankings on an "idiomaticity'" scale. Listeners were unable to discriminate the literal from the idiomatic versions when presented with randomized single sentences excised from paragraph contexts. There was a bias toward interpreting the sentences as idioms, which correlated with rankings of each sentence fbr its likelihood of idiomatic use. Listeners were easily able to identify' the literal and the idiomatic versions of the same ditropic sentences presented in pairs or singularly, when speakers sought purposively to convey the contrasting meanings.