Texts frequently contain expression whose meaning is not strictly literal, such as idioms. Idiomatic and non-literal expressions pose a major challenge to natural language processing technology as they often exhibit lexical and syntactic idiosyncrasies. We propose a novel unsupervised method for distinguishing literal and non-literal usages of expressions. Our method determines how well a liter...

This paper provides a binary, token-based classification of German particle verbs (PVs) into literal vs. non-literal usage. A random forest improving standard features (e.g., bagof-words; affective ratings) with PV-specific information and abstraction over common nouns significantly outperforms the majority baseline. In addition, PV-specific classification experiments demonstrate the role of sh...

Over the last few decades, a considerable number of experimental studies have been made on the time-course of literal and nonliteral comprehension. These studies have been devoted to test two incompatible models of nonliteral processing: serial model and parallel (direct) model. The serial model states that literal interpretation is an obligatory process and nonliteral interpretation is trigger...

Language comprehension involves activating word meanings and integrating them with the sentence context. This study examined whether these routines are carried out even when they are theoretically unnecessary, namely, in the case of opaque idiomatic expressions, for which the literal word meanings are unrelated to the overall meaning of the expression. Predictable words in sentences were replac...

Bare numerals present an interesting challenge to formal semantics and pragmatics: they seem to be compatible between various readings (‘at least’, ‘exactly’, and ‘at most’ readings), and the choice of a particular reading seems to depend on complex interactions between contextual factors and linguistic structure. The goal of this article is to present and discuss some of the current approaches...

From the analysis of naturally occurring texts we obtained evidence for the systematic interaction between nominal anaphora and metonymies. This leads us to postulate an integrated model incorporating both phenomena simultaneously. The consideration of discourse constraints for metonymy resolution allows us to challenge the commonly held view that the interpretation of metonymies should proceed...

Do the integration of semantic information and that of world knowledge occur simultaneously or in sequence during sentence processing? To address this question, we investigated event-related brain potentials elicited by the critical word of English sentences in three conditions: (1) correct; (2) semantic violation; (3) world knowledge violation (semantically correct but factually incorrect). Cr...

In my recent defense of literal’meaning (Dascal, 1987), my main concern was to show that such a theoretical construct is “psychologically real”. At least in one sense, Gibbs (1989, p. 249) grants this point. For he acknowledges that the meanings I call “literal” are among the “variety of products that result from language understanding,” and adds: “Nobody disputes this as an aspect of psycholog...

Native speakers of English use idioms such as put your foot down and spill the beans to label events that are not described literally by the words that compose the idioms. For many such expressions, the idiomatic meanings are transparent; that is, the connection between the literal expression and its figurative meaning makes sense to native speakers. We tested Keysar and Bly's (1995) hypothesis...