Are figurative interpretations of idioms directly retrieved, compositionally built, or both? Evidence from eye movement measures of reading.

Abstract

Idioms are part of a general class of multiword expressions where the overall interpretation cannot be fully determined through a simple syntactic and semantic (i.e., compositional) analysis of their component words (e.g., kick the bucket, save your skin). Idioms are thus simultaneously amenable to direct retrieval from memory, and to an on-demand compositional analysis, yet it is unclear which processes lead to figurative interpretations of idioms during comprehension. In this eye-tracking study, healthy adults read sentences in their native language that contained idioms, which were followed by figurative-or literal-biased disambiguating sentential information. The results showed that the earliest stages of comprehension are driven by direct retrieval of idiomatic forms, however, later stages of comprehension, after which point the intended meaning of an idiom is known, are driven by both direct retrieval and compositional processing. Of note, at later stages, increased idiom decomposability slowed reading time, suggesting more effortful figurative comprehension. Together, these results are most consistent with multi-determined or hybrid models of idiom processing.

Figuring Out How Verb-Particle Constructions Are Understood During L1 and L2 Reading

“…However, this past work also revealed a general monolingual preference for adjacent VPCs overall, which we did not detect with bilinguals reading in their L1. This divergence is similar to the mismatch between current and early findings of classic idioms, more specifically related to the facilitative vs. interfering role of semantic transparency on reading (e.g., Titone et al, 2019). Indeed, the eye-tracking data from the present work indicates that L1 preferences emerge early on, during first pass reading, as opposed to emerging upon rereading.…”

“…One could understand this pattern of results as evidence for a preferred direct meaning retrieval mechanism over word-by-word composition. When the VPC optimally matches what is likely stored in the lexicon (i.e., opaque, adjacent form) the meaning is retrieved quickly (Titone et al, 2019). However, when this mapping is less frequent or familiar, retrieval is less rapid, which aligns with recent work demonstrating that more figuratively-dominant idioms are read more quickly than idioms with more balanced figurative-literal meanings (Milburn and Warren, 2019).…”

“…These cognitive demands are likely to be even greater for bilingual readers who vary continuously in terms of relative first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) experience. Much of the work on figurative language has analyzed the processing of idioms (e.g., kick the bucket ), which are highly conventionalized multiword expressions with meanings that often transcend the semantics of their constituent words (Nunberg, 1978; Gibbs et al, 1989; Cacciari and Glucksberg, 1991; Titone and Connine, 1999; Abel, 2003; Libben and Titone, 2008; Titone and Libben, 2014; Titone et al, 2019). This body of research has focused on fixed expressions that tend to have words in fixed positions.…”

“…Others have extended these frequency effects to models of traditional idiom processing (e.g., Cronk et al, 1993). For example, in an eye-tracking study of classic idioms, Titone et al (2019) assessed how both frequency and semantic transparency influenced early vs. late eye fixation measures. One of their main findings was that higher frequency idioms were read more rapidly on the first pass.…”

The Development of Idiom Knowledge Across the Lifespan

“…However, the exact nature of the way in which decomposability modulates online processing is still disputed, as its effect is not always facilitatory. Titone and Libben (2014) found late inhibitory effects of decomposability in a cross-modal semantic priming task and Titone et al (2019) observed late inhibitory effects of decomposability during idiom reading. Interestingly, Westbury and Titone (2011) found an interaction of decomposability with age: in a literality judgment task, older adults were relatively slower than younger adults to accept non-decomposable idioms with a literal meaning and made more errors.…”