Unsupervised recognition of literal and non-literal use of idiomatic expressions

We propose an unsupervised method for distinguishing literal and non-literal usages of idiomatic expressions. Our method determines how well a literal interpretation is linked to the overall cohesive structure of the discourse. If strong links can be found, the expression is classified as literal, otherwise as idiomatic. We show that this method can help to tell apart literal and non-literal usages, even for idioms which occur in canonical form.