The Development of Idiom Knowledge Across the Lifespan

Abstract

Knowledge of multi-word expressions, such as break the ice, is an important aspect of language proficiency that so far we have known surprisingly little about. For example, it is largely unknown how much variability there is between speakers with respect to the number of different items that they know, or what factors contribute to their acquisition. This lack of knowledge seriously limits the generalizability of experimental studies on the production and comprehension of multi-word expressions (usually idioms) and generally suggests that there still is a sizable unknown territory of language knowledge to explore. Here, we present the results of two familiarity ratings for a large sample of Dutch idioms and a large number of participants that varied in age between 12 and 86 years old. The data show considerable variation between participants and between idioms. Non-linear mixed-effects regression analyses revealed that the age of participants, but not their education, as well as the frequency and decomposability of the idioms influenced the familiarity scores. Our findings suggest that the knowledge of multiword expressions develops across the lifespan, is acquired from exposure, and-in participants younger than about 40 years of age-varies with item decomposability.

Event-related potentials reveal increased dependency on linguistic context due to cognitive aging.

“…Although unexpected, this result adds a novel insight to the existing literature by generalizing previous findings on the facilitative effect of idioms on language processing in younger adults (e.g., Canal et al, 2015; Conklin & Schmitt, 2008; Laurent et al, 2006; Paulmann et al, 2015; Rommers et al, 2013; Siyanova-Chanturia et al, 2011, 2017; Strandburg et al, 1993; Swinney & Cutler, 1979; Underwood et al, 2004; Vespignani et al, 2010) to a population of elderly adults. Again, these findings are in line with our recent study showing that idiom familiarity increases with age (Sprenger et al, 2019). Although being familiar with an idiom is not the same as being able to process its meaning in context, it is conceivable that elderly adults’ larger experience with idiomatic expressions throughout their life compensates for the potential difficulties that may be involved in selecting the idiom’s intended, figurative meaning.…”

“…This may compensate for the age-related slowing down in sentence processing (see Dagerman et al, 2006). In addition, we recently showed that idiom familiarity is particularly well established in the elderly (Sprenger, la Roi, & Van Rij, 2019). Because familiarity has also been found to play an important role in the processing advantage of idioms (Carrol & Conklin, 2019), elderly adults may rely much less on additional context information to construct the meaning of idiomatic sentences than younger adults.…”

Resolving Figurative Expressions During Reading: The Role of Familiarity, Transparency, and Context

“…Understanding figurative meaning requires the language user to employ a complex set of skills, such as semantic analysis (consideration of properties such as transparency or decomposability) and making inferences based on the broader context of use (Levorato & Cacciari, 1995. However, a sometimes overlooked aspect is simply the knowledge of conventionalized expressions that speakers can call on when required, and which builds up during a lifetime of linguistic and cultural experience (Sprenger, la Roi & van Rij, 2019). The importance of prior knowledge to how figurative expressions are understood is reflected in the range of experimental studies that have investigated this.…”

From Solving a Problem Boldly to Cutting the Gordian Knot: Idiomatic Text Generation

“…This task can be regarded as paraphrasing only a portion of the original sentence because we retain the remaining portion intact. We use ideas about native speakers accessing a mental lexicon of formulaic expressions, including IEs (Jackendoff, 1995;Gibbs Jr, 2007;Sprenger et al, 2006Sprenger et al, , 2019 to propose a generation model built upon a pipeline of three modules that perform idiom retrieval, span extraction and idiomatic sentence generation.…”

“…We then used the dataset to compare a set of competitive NLG methods from prior art, including a method that we propose, for the task of idiomatic sentence generation. Our proposed approach is a set of modules that are simple to train and is inspired by a key idea from cognitive linguistic theories of formulaic expression use, which posit that humans produce IEs by having a mental lexicon of multiword expressions and idioms (Jackendoff, 1995;Gibbs Jr, 2007;Sprenger et al, 2019).…”