No abstract

Research into recurrent, highly conventionalized “formulaic” sequences has shown a processing advantage compared to “novel” (non-formulaic) language. Studies of individual types of formulaic sequence often acknowledge the contribution of specific factors, but little work exists to compare the processing of different types of phrases with fundamentally different properties. We use eye-tracking to compare the processing of three types of formulaic phrases—idioms, binomials, and collocations—and consider whether overall frequency can explain the advantage for all three, relative to control phrases. Results show an advantage, as evidenced through shorter reading times, for all three types. While overall phrase frequency contributes much of the processing advantage, different types of phrase do show additional effects according to the specific properties that are relevant to each type: frequency, familiarity, and decomposability for idioms; predictability and semantic association for binomials; and mutual information for collocations. We discuss how the results contribute to our understanding of the representation and processing of multiword lexical units more broadly.

Idiom priming effects (faster processing compared to novel phrases) are generally robust in native speakers but not non-native speakers. This leads to the question of how idioms and other multiword units are represented and accessed in a first (L1) and second language (L2). We address this by investigating the processing of translated Chinese idioms to determine whether known L1 combinations show idiom priming effects in non-native speakers when encountered in the L2. In two eye-tracking experiments we compared reading times for idioms vs. control phrases (Experiment 1) and for figurative vs. literal uses of idioms (Experiment 2). Native speakers of Chinese showed recognition of the L1 form in the L2, but figurative meanings were read more slowly than literal meanings, suggesting that the non-compositional nature of idioms makes them problematic in a non-native language. We discuss the results as they relate to crosslinguistic priming at the multiword level.

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While it is possible to express the same meaning in different ways (‘bread and butter’ versus ‘butter and bread’), we tend to say things in the same way. As much as half of spoken discourse is made up of formulaic language or linguistic patterns. Despite its prevalence, little is known about how the processing system treats novel patterns and how rapidly a sensitivity to them arises in natural contexts. To address this, we monitored native English speakers’ eye movements when reading short stories containing existing (conventional) patterns (‘time and money’), seen once, and novel patterns (‘wires and pipes’), seen one to five times. Subsequently, readers saw both existing and novel phrases in the reversed order (‘money and time’; ‘pipes and wires’). In four to five exposures, much like existing lexical patterns, novel ones demonstrate a processing advantage. Sensitivity to lexical patterns—including the co-occurrence of lexical items and the order in which they occur—arises rapidly and automatically during natural reading. This has implications for language learning and is in line with usage-based models of language processing.