We show how emergence offers new explanations for the behaviour of metaphorically-used expressions. Analysis of metaphors in two types of natural language data are combined: detailed analysis of continuous discourse, which offers wealth of context and the possibility of monitoring emergent forms as the discourse unfolds, and computer-assisted…

A large proportion of text is made up of a variety of multi-word units (MWUs). One type of MWU is "idioms". While previously linguists have established criteria to define an idiom, the criteria have often been general so as to apply to the wide-ranging MWUs found in this category, and have been a description of them rather than a definition. We…