Dissociation between syntactic and semantic processing during idiom comprehension.

Abstract

Syntactic and semantic processing of literal and idiomatic phrases were investigated with a priming procedure. In 3 experiments, participants named targets that were syntactically appropriate or inappropriate completions for semantically unrelated sentence contexts. Sentences ended with incomplete idioms (kick the...) and were biased for either a literal (ball) or an idiomatic (bucket) completion. Syntactically appropriate targets were named more quickly than inappropriate ones for both contextual biases, suggesting that syntactic analysis occurs for idioms. In a final experiment, targets were either concrete (expected) or abstract (unexpected) nouns. For literal sentences, the abstract targets were named more slowly than the concrete targets. In contrast, there was no concreteness effect for idiomatic sentences, suggesting that the literal meaning of the idiom is not processed. Overall, the results provide evidence for dissociation between syntactic and semantic processing.

Context-dependent Semantic Processing in the Human Brain: Evidence from Idiom Comprehension

“…In contrast, we substituted words with semantically related or unrelated words, such that in the anomalous conditions the word in question was never actually presented, which likely emphasizes top-down effects such as anticipation. This explanation is supported by the observation that, in the previously discussed study by Peterson et al (2001), the final words of the idioms were also not presented but had to be produced by the participants themselves. In line with our results, this study did not report evidence for literal word meaning activation.…”

“…However, other studies have demonstrated a lack of literal word meaning activation in idioms. Peterson, Burgess, Dell, and Eberhard (2001) found that, when participants were asked to complete predictable sentence contexts with a spoken target word, there was a concreteness effect in literal sentences (shorter speech onset latencies for abstract than concrete target words) but not in idioms, suggesting that literal word meanings were not processed. Furthermore, in an fMRI study, somatotopically distributed activation of the motor system was observed for action verbs in isolation (e.g., grab/kick), in literal sentences (e.g., The fruit cake was the last one so Claire grabbed it), but not in idioms in sentences (e.g., The job offer was a great chance so Claire grabbed it; Raposo, Moss, Stamatakis, & Tyler, 2009).…”

Why are idioms recognized fast?

“…The data Whether the constituents of clichés lose their semantic value-that is, whether or not they are fully processed as individual words when occurring in the cliché-is a different issue. There are various pieces of evidence suggesting that the individual words of conventional expressions are indeed analyzed (Konopka & Bock, 2009;Peterson, Burgess, Dell, & Eberhard, 2001;Trueswell & Kim, 1998;Van de Voort & Vonk, 1995); we will return to this point later. But even if it should turn out that the individual components of clichés are not fully analyzed during string processing, in these expressions it is still the case that the meaning is the result of the composition of their individual words.…”

“…Using a sentence-priming procedure, Peterson et al (2001) had their participants hear sentence primes ending with incomplete idioms. Sentences were biased toward a literal (e.g., the soccer player slipped when tried to kick the .…”

Formulaicity in an agglutinating language: the case of Turkish

“…There is, rather, a continuum between wholly memorized and wholly rule-based constructions, with most forms falling somewhere between these extremes (Langacker, 1987). Hence, apparently abstract syntactic constructions may be associated with particular lexis (Hoey, 2005;Hunston & Francis, 2000;Stefanowitsch & Gries, 2003) and apparently memorized forms (such as idioms) may be subject to syntactic processing and variation (Gibbs, Nayak, & Cutting, 1989;Peterson, Burgess, Dell, & Eberhard, 2001). …”