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1.Introduction
avenerabletraditioncontinuedintheworkongrammaticization,one
ofwhosemajorinsightsisthatgrammaticalitemscanbetracedbackto
lexicalwords.Inthetwentiethcentury,thedivisionintoopen-classand
closed-classformshasfiguredexplicitlyorimplicitlyinanalysesofmany
diferentquestionsinthelinguisticliterature.HenrySweet(1913,p.31)
sawitinqualitativetermsinhisobservationthatHgrammardealswith
thegeneralfactsoflanguage,lexicologywiththespecialfacts.”Similarly,
Jespersen(1924,p.32)notedthatH[w]henwecometoconsiderthebestway
inwhichtoarrangelinguisticfacts,weareatonceconfrontedwiththe
veryimportantdivisionbetweengrammaranddictionary(lexicology).”
ThedivisionisevenmoreevidentinBloomfield’s(1933,p.274)dismissive
pronouncementthatthelexiconisHanappendixofthegrammar,alist
ofbasicirregularities.”Chomskyusedthisviewtojustifyhisdecision
tofocusonsyntaxanddisregardthelexiconasalocusofidiosyncrasies
notworthyofgeneralizations.Thedistinctionisalsoattheheartofthe
WordsandRulesTheory(Pinker&Prince,1991;Pinker,1999),whichas‑
sumedthatrulesandlexicalitemsareprocessedbytwoqualitatively
diferentmechanisms,namelyapatern-basedmechanismprocessing
rulesandamechanismforhandlinglexicalitemsasidiosyncraticforms.
1.2.Rejection
Recently,however,theworthofthedistinctionhasbeenputinquestion.
Thefirstsignsofproblemswiththedistinctionwerenotedalreadyin
theearlyyearsofGenerativeGrammarresearchwhenChomskyrealized
thatidiomswerenoteasilycapturedbythegenerativemodel,thesolu‑
tionbeingtoputasideHphenomenathatresultfromhistoricalaccident,
dialectmixture,personalidiosyncrasies,andthelike”inthehopethat
theywouldbeexplainedlater(Chomsky,1995,p.20).ThenFillmore’s
workonidiomsledtotherecognitionthatdespitetheirphrasalform,
theyareirreducibleunitsoflanguagenotexplainedbyothermoreab‑
stractprinciples,andtheycannotbecharacterizedinalevel-independent
way.Fillmore,KayandO’Connor(1988)observedthattheyaretherefore
inmanywaysakintoindividualmorphemesandinotherstolargefreely
composablephrasesaccountedforbygeneralrulesofsyntax.Theprob‑
lemthatidiomsposeisthattheycannotbeplacedoneithersideofthe
lexicon-grammardivide.Thesenseoffuzzinessisfurtheraggravatedby
thefactthatidiomsthemselvesarenotahomogenousgroup;theycome
invaryingdegreesofschematicity,somebeingstronglysubstantiveand
