Native speakers kick buckets, but learners kick doors: A comparison of native and nonnative idiom comprehension.
Multiword expressions—also called multiword chunks, fixed expressions, lexical bundles, or formulaic sequences—are familiar sequences of words that occur with high frequency in language. Recent focus on multiword expressions, as distinct units of language with distinct processing ramifications, rais...
| Publicado en: | Memory & Cognition Vol. 54; no. 5; pp. 1861 - 1884 |
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| Autores principales: | , , , , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Springer Nature
Jul2026
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=195652894&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 195652894 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 0090502X MEG jtl: Memory & Cognition issn: 0090502X maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Jul2026 vid: 54 iid: 5 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 195652894 10.3758/s13421-025-01843-5 ppf: 1861 ppct: 23 formats: tig: atl: Native speakers kick buckets, but learners kick doors: A comparison of native and nonnative idiom comprehension. aug: au: Milburn, Evelyn Vulchanova, Mila Vulchanov, Valentin Saltzman, David Magnuson, James affil: https://ror.org/05h1bnb22 Department of Psychology, North Dakota State University, PO Box 6050, Dept 2546, 58102, Fargo, ND, USA https://ror.org/05xg72x27 Department of Language and Literature, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway https://ror.org/02der9h97 Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA https://ror.org/03bnah904 Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Storrs, CT, USA https://ror.org/01a28zg77 Basque Center on Cognition, Brain, and Language, Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain https://ror.org/01cc3fy72 Ikerbasque: Basque Foundation for Science, Bilbao, Spain su: Connecticut Norway Communicative competence Task performance Undergraduates Learning Figures of speech Scale analysis (Psychology) Research funding Grammar Phonological awareness Eye movement measurements English as a foreign language sug: subj: Communicative competence Task performance Undergraduates Learning Figures of speech Connecticut Norway Language Schools Scale analysis (Psychology) Research funding Grammar Phonological awareness Eye movement measurements English as a foreign language keyword: Communication and Culture Linguistics Psychology and Cognitive Sciences Psychology Cognitive Sciences Figurative language Idioms Language Multiword expressions Second language learning Communication and Culture Linguistics Psychology and Cognitive Sciences Psychology Cognitive Sciences Figurative language Idioms Language Multiword expressions Second language learning ab: Multiword expressions—also called multiword chunks, fixed expressions, lexical bundles, or formulaic sequences—are familiar sequences of words that occur with high frequency in language. Recent focus on multiword expressions, as distinct units of language with distinct processing ramifications, raises the question of how they are used during second language processing: Although processing of multiword expressions appears to grow more native-like as proficiency increases, even highly proficient L2 speakers may not process multiword expressions in entirely native-like ways. We conducted a visual world eye tracking study of idiom comprehension to examine how the balance between compositional and whole-phrase processing changes in second language comprehension. L1 and advanced L2 English speakers listened to sentences consisting of a literal or figurative biasing context clause and a target clause with the final word missing, while simultaneously viewing images representing possible literal or figurative continuations of the clause. Growth curve analysis of eye movement data provided suggestive evidence that L1 and L2 speakers were biased towards different processing strategies during idiom comprehension, with L2 speakers, in particular, taking a more compositional approach towards computing figurative meaning. We also found evidence of qualitative processing differences between literal and figurative expressions, with literal processing being strongly driven by anticipatory mechanisms and figurative processing being driven by within-phrase associations for both groups. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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