The reaction on the part of the community of language researchers has ranged between the grudging acceptance that some multiple word collocation do exist in the lexicon, and the lexicon re-conceptualized as incorporating elements from all levels of linguistic structure. "According to this second view idiomatic expressions represent one end of a continuum which places highly analyzable and semantically decomposable utterances at one end, and highly specified, semantically opaque idioms at the other" (Sanford, 2008).

Current literature says that idioms make up a very large and heterogeneous class of semi-fixed multiword expressions. Traditionally, in order to classify an expression as idiomatic it had to be non-compositional in nature. "If an expression is thought to be non-compositional, it is believed that its meaning cannot be inferred by simply adding up the semantics of its constituents. As a result, the meaning of idioms appears to be quite arbitrary" (Boers, 2007). It is...
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