...declares that semantic compositionality can go awry, and cites the following three examples.
anomolous sentences, metaphors, and idioms
100
This is the concrete thing, idea, person, etc. to which abstract meaning in the brain is assigned to or refers to.
referent
200
kitty
[kʰɪɾi]
200
rodger
/rɑdʒər/
200
...sits down on a stool and exclaims, "It's so hot out there, a man could die of thirst..." The bartender says, "Listen here, buddy, if you want a drink, just ask for one straight up. We ain't exactly students of ________ in here."
pragmatics
200
This is a semantic feature of nouns which often times indicates the semantic class of a noun, such as a "count noun" or "mass noun." Often these are actual morphemes, like in Swahili and English; other times, they are function words, such as the definite articles in Spanish.
classifiers
300
height
[haɪʔ]
300
whether (southern style)
/ʍɛðər/
300
...looks around the barroom and exclaims, "If I were a rich man, I'd have a lot of money." The bartender barks, "Read the sign, buddy!" and points to a large sign above the bar, which reads "NO ________ ALLOWED."
tautologies
300
What is a syntactic test you can run on an idiom to argue that, semantically and lexically, it should be treated as a single unit, rather than a decomposable phrase or sentence?