Contrasting Bilingual and Monolingual Idiom Processing

Titone, Debra; Columbus, Georgie; Whitford, Veronica; Mercier, Julie; Libben, Maya

doi:10.1017/cbo9781139342100.011

Cited by 53 publications

(57 citation statements)

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“…In fact, recent hybrid models of idiom processing in both L1 and L2 highlight the role of idiom properties, such as transparency and cross-language overlap, during idiom processing (Libben & Titone, 2008;Titone et al, 2015). These factors appear to exert a similar influence on idiom processing and on L2 idiom learning as observed in our study: Transparency is found to facilitate idiom processing in both native speakers (see Titone, 2008 andDijkstra, 2020) and L2 learners (Titone et al, 2015), and Cross-Language Overlap positively affected L2 idiom processing (Titone et al, 2015). Therefore, differences between the two groups seem to result from differences in exposure, rather than from differences in the underlying mechanisms involved in idiom processing.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The idiomatic expressions included in the experiment are presented in the Appendix, Table A1. For cross-language overlap, we decided to adopt a four-level classification similar to those applied by Laufer (2000) and Titone, Columbus, Whitford, Mercier, and Libben (2015): (1) The Dutch idiom does not exist in German (NE), (2) The Dutch idiom does exist in German, but in completely different content words (DW), (3) The Dutch idiom does exist in German and has n content words in common (nW), (4) The Dutch idiom has a word-to-word correspondent in German (AW). Two German-Dutch bilingual students determined cross-language overlap separately and subsequently compared their scores.…”

Section: Idiomatic Expressionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Learning L2 idioms in a CALL environment: the role of practice intensity, modality, and idiom properties

Cucchiarini

Hubers

Strik

2020

Computer Assisted Language Learning

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Idiomatic expressions like hit the road or turn the tables are known to be problematic for L2 learners, but research indicates that learning L2 idiomatic language is important. Relatively few studies, most of them focusing on English idioms, have investigated how L2 idioms are actually acquired and how this process is affected by important idiom properties like transparency (the degree to which the figurative meaning of an idiom can be inferred from its literal analysis) and cross-language overlap (the degree to which L2 idioms correspond to L1 idioms). The present study employed a specially designed CALL system to investigate the effects of intensity of practice and the reading modality on learning Dutch L2 idioms, as well as the impact of idiom transparency and cross-language overlap. The results show that CALL practice with a focus on meaning and form is effective for learning L2 idioms and that the degree of practice needed depends on the properties of the idioms. L2 learners can achieve or even exceed native-like performance. Practicing reading idioms aloud does not lead to significantly higher performance than reading idioms silently.These findings have theoretical implications as they show that differences between native speakers and L2 learners are due to differences in exposure, rather than to different underlying acquisition mechanisms. For teaching practice, this study indicates that a properly designed CALL system is an effective and an ecologically sound environment for learning L2 idioms, a generally unattended area in L2 classes, and that teaching priorities should be based on degree of transparency and cross-language overlap of L2 idioms.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Idiomatic Expressionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning L2 idioms in a CALL environment: the role of practice intensity, modality, and idiom properties

Cucchiarini

Hubers

Strik

2020

Computer Assisted Language Learning

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“…Idioms comprise a sizeable part of the repertoire of native language users (Pawley & Snyder, 1983) and have been extensively studied in monolinguals (Wray, 2012), and, to a lesser extent, in second language users (e.g., Cieslicka, 2015) or bilinguals (Titone, Columbus, Whitford, Mercier & Libben, 2015). They are of interest to linguists because they have a fixed, conventional meaning, which may or may not be related to the literal meaning of the individual words in the idiomatic expression.…”

Section: Figurative Language and Idiom Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

FácilorA piece of cake: Does variability in bilingual language brokering experience affect idiom comprehension?

López

Vaid

2017

Bilingualism

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Compared to studies of the effects of formal training in translation, little is known about the psycholinguistic impact of the experience of informal translation, or language brokering. The present study examined this issue in the context of idiom comprehension. Bilingual adults differing in prior brokering experience read English idioms and judged whether target words presented in English or Spanish were related to the idiom's meaning. For brokers, relatedness judgments were not affected by whether the targets were in the same or different language as the idiom; however, non-brokers were faster for same-language than different-language idiom-target pairings. The findings suggest that language brokering experience facilitates idiom meaning comprehension even across language boundaries, with further differences related to idiom decomposability. More generally, the findings underscore the importance of considering systematic sources of variability in language practice among bilinguals, aside from differences related to proficiency, in theorizing effects associated with bilingualism.

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“…As is true of other linguistic domains, such as word morphology (Geeraert, Newman, & Baayen, 2018;O'Donnell, 2015), there are at least three logical options for how people compute a figurative interpretation of idioms: 1) an idiom's constituent words are accessed individually from memory, compositionally analyzed, and the figurative interpretation generated on demand as a direct outcome of these incremental, semantic and syntactic processes, 2) an idiomatic form is recognized as a previously learned multiword pattern and its figurative meaning is directly retrieved from memory, or finally, 3) direct retrieval of multiword forms and compositional processing of word constituents proceed in parallel, and the figurative interpretation is a multidetermined product of both. Indeed, these logical options largely map onto the available set of idiom processing models posited in the psycholinguistic literature (for reviews of this literature specific to idioms, see Titone et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Titone¹,

Lovseth

Kasparian

et al. 2019

Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology / Revue canadienne

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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.

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Contrasting Bilingual and Monolingual Idiom Processing

Cited by 53 publications

References 100 publications

Learning L2 idioms in a CALL environment: the role of practice intensity, modality, and idiom properties

Learning L2 idioms in a CALL environment: the role of practice intensity, modality, and idiom properties

FácilorA piece of cake: Does variability in bilingual language brokering experience affect idiom comprehension?

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

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