Speedy Metonymy, Tricky Metaphor, Irrelevant Compositionality: How Nonliteralness Affects Idioms in Reading and Rating

It is widely acknowledged that fixed expressions such as idioms have a processing advantage over non-idiomatic language. While many idioms are metaphoric, metonymic, or even literal, the effect of varying nonliteralness in their processing has not been much researched yet. Theoretical and empirical findings suggest that metonymies are easier to process than metaphors but it is unclear whether this applies to idioms. Two self-paced reading...