Being presented with phrases of the kind, 'take the plunge' and 'write a letter', native speakers of English tend to agree that the former is more idiomatic that the latter. What exactly is it about these two phrases that guide speakers' judgements? Adopting a usage-based perspective, this study addresses the question 'which factors do speakers rely upon when assessing the idiomaticity of a construction?'.

Rethinking Idiomaticity is the first study to bring together a quantitative corpus-linguistic approach and quantitative judgement data to explore the nature of...