SEMANTIC TRANSPARENCY AND OPACITY IN FIXED EXPRESSIONS
Semantic transparency and opacity in fixed

Summary/Abstract: The paper focuses on the problems of semantic transparency and opacity in fixed expressions, particularly in collocations and idioms. There are degrees of semantic transparency in collocations. Collocations are perceived as being semantically transparent. Yet, this cannot be taken to imply that their meaning is always a compositional function of the meanings of their constituents. On the other hand, recurrent semantic contrast does not mean that all idioms are equally difficult to decode. Idioms show different degrees of ambiguity, of semantic opacity. Knowledge of the world will play a part in the degree to which speakers feel idioms to be opaque.

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