Abstract

Multiword expressions such as idioms (beat about the bush), collocations (plastic surgery) and lexical bundles (in the middle of) are challenging for disciplines like Natural Language Processing (NLP), psycholinguistics and second language acquisition, , due to their more or less fixed character. Idiomatic expressions are especially problematic, because they convey a figurative meaning that cannot always be inferred from the literal meanings of the component words. Researchers acknowledge that important properties that characterize idioms such as frequency of exposure, familiarity, transparency, and imageability, should be taken into account in research, but these are typically properties that rely on subjective judgments. This is probably one of the reasons why many studies that investigated idiomatic expressions collected limited information about idiom properties for very small numbers of idioms only. In this paper we report on cross-boundary work aimed at developing a set of tools and language resources that are considered crucial for this kind of multifaceted research. We discuss the results of our research and suggest possible avenues for future research