The dependency grammar trees of a few sentences containing non-constituent idioms illustrate the point: The fixed words of the idiom (in orange) in each case are linked together by dependencies; they form a catena. The material that is outside of the idiom (in normal black script) is not part of the idiom. The following two trees illustrate proverbs: The fixed words of the proverbs (in orange) again form a catena each time. The adjective nitty-gritty and the adverb always are not part of the respective proverb and their appearance does not interrupt the fixed words of the proverb. A caveat concerning the catena-based analysis of idioms concerns their status in the lexicon. Idioms are lexical items, which means they are stored as catenae in the lexicon. In the actual syntax, however, some idioms can be broken up by various functional constructions. The catena-based analysis of idioms provides a basis for an understanding of meaning compositionality. The Principle of Compositionality can in fact be maintained. Units of meaning are being assigned to catenae, whereby many of these catenae are not constituents. Various studies have investigated methods to develop the ability to interpret idioms in children with various diagnoses including Autism, Moderate Learning Difficulties, Developmental Language Disorder and typically developing weak readers. See also Adage Catena (linguistics) Chengyu Cliché Collocation Comprehension of idioms English-language idioms Figure of speech Metaphor Multiword expression Phrasal verb Principle of compositionality Rhetorical device References Bibliography Crystal, A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics, 4th edition. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers. Culicover, P. and R. Jackendoff. 2005. Simpler syntax. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Jackendoff, R. 1997. The architecture of the language faculty. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. Jurafsky, D. and J. Martin. 2008. Speech and language processing: An introduction to natural language processing, computational linguistics, and speech recognition. Dorling Kindersley (India): Pearson Education, Inc. Leaney, C. 2005. In the know: Understanding and using idioms. New York: Cambridge University Press. Mel’čuk, I. 1995. "Phrasemes in language and phraseology in linguistics". In M. Everaert, E.-J. van der Linden, A. Schenk and R. Schreuder (eds.), Idioms: Structural and psychological perspectives, 167–232. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum. Portner, P. 2005. What is meaning?: Fundamentals of formal semantics. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Radford, A. English syntax: An introduction. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Saeed, J. 2003. Semantics. 2nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell. Further reading External links The Idioms – Online English idioms dictionary. babelite.org – Online cross-language