1 Chapter 1. Introduction: status and definition of compounding ...

compositionality can be represented as a cline on which multiword expressions are situated.
Hence, expressions to be referred to as idiomatic must be those that are not compositional. 5
It should be borne in mind that the concept of compositionality as presented here refers to
the semantic unity of the given expression; therefore it would not be right to argue that
compositionality is in the proportional relation to predictability. Even less could we say that
‗compositional‘ is simply an equivalent term of ‗predictable‘. These two properties are not
always interdependent: whereas compositional expressions can be claimed to be predictable,
non-compositional ones are not automatically unpredictable. (Suffice it to compare the examples
cited just above; or, for example, describe a murder vs. commit murder – scream blue murder.)
In fact, my view of the concept of ‗predictability‘ is basically in line with the one that defines it
as (paraphrasing Štekauer 2005) the degree of probability that a particular meaning of a naming
unit (i.e. idiomatic expression) encountered for the first time by the interlocutor will be
interpreted in preference to other possible (imaginable) meanings. Hence I believe, too, perhaps
trying to extend the definition a little, that the issue of predictability, which concerns the process
of comprehending, must be discussed from two perspectives, or, in other words, must be viewed
as existing on two, yet interconnected, levels. On a more general level, there must be a device in
people‘s minds which decides on the choice of either literal or figurative / non-literal meaning.
Here we usually point to the role of context, which is believed to bias the interpretation. In my
view the concept of context is used in a broader sense, namely, it comprises not only ‗verbal,
linguistic context‘, or ‗co-text‘, but also so-called ‗context of situation‘, or ‗co-situation‘, which
involves phenomena connected with the cultural background, including speakers‘ current
knowledge of the external world. 6 On another level we analyze the internal structure of the
expression whose components add to the total meaning. Although this computation (to use the
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