Idioms are especially complicated language units from a semantic point of view. They are motivated, expressive, ambigue, imagic and imaginistic, and contain a semantic added value. This corpus-based research on idioms shows that their meanings are not as stable as it has been presumed until now and that dictionary definitions contain many shortcomings. The aim of this article is to reveal the semantic potential of idioms in use and to explain it from a cognitive perspective. It is argued that the semantic complexity of idioms results from two aspects: (i) their ambiguity based on interaction between the literal and the lexicalized meaning, (ii) their polylexicality – the semantic derivations can occur not only on the level of the word group but also concern the individual components. As this research shows, the most important mechanisms of meaning constitution are metonymy, metaphor and metaphtonymy.

中文翻译：

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认知潜能

从语义的角度来看，习语是特别复杂的语言单元。它们具有动机性，表达性，歧义性，意象性和想象力，并包含语义上的附加值。这项基于语料库的习语研究表明，其含义并不像现在所假定的那样稳定，并且词典定义包含许多缺点。本文的目的是揭示成语在使用中的语义潜力，并从认知的角度对其进行解释。有人认为，成语的语义复杂性来自两个方面：（i）基于字面意义和词汇化含义之间相互作用的歧义性；（ii）它们的多义性–语义派生不仅可以出现在词组的水平上而且还涉及各个组成部分。这项研究显示，