Idioms in sentences: Effects of frequency, literalness, and familiarity

Why are idioms recognized fast?

“…This conclusion is not particularly surprising, if one considers the relevance that familiarity has in the recognition of individual words (Connine et al, 1990;Gernsbacher, 1984) as well as in the processing of idioms (Cronk et al, 1993;Giora & Fein, 1999;Schweigert, 1991;Schweigert et al, 2003). It has been shown, for example, that familiarity is one of the variables that render idiomatic expressions a heterogeneous class (Glass, 1983;Schweigert, 1986).…”

“…One way to capture this distinction is to note that the two types of expressionsidioms and controls-differ in terms of familiarity, a variable well known to influence the processing of both individual words and idioms (Connine, Mullennix, Shernoff, & Yelen, 1990;Gernsbacher, 1984;Schweigert, 1986). Obviously, not all idioms are equally familiar; some are more familiar than others, and there is evidence that more familiar idioms are processed faster than less familiar ones are (Cronk, Lima, & Schweigert, 1993;Cronk & Schweigert, 1992). Unfortunately, in the early studies that established the idiom superiority effect, familiarity of the idiomatic strings is not always available (Gibbs, 1980; clichés should all be equally faster than matched control expressions.…”

Norms and comprehension times for 305 French idiomatic expressions

“…For instance, all influential models of word reading (e.g., Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001;Harm & Seidenberg, 2004) are able to account for the finding that high-frequency words are processed faster and more accurately than low-frequency words in experimental tasks such as lexical decision and reading aloud. However, the influence of objective word frequency in idiom processing has received little attention (Cronk et al, 1993;Libben & Titone, 2008). For instance, in the French normative study of 300 idiomatic expressions, this variable was not taken into account.…”

“…Cronk and Schweigert (1992) found that high-literalness (idiom's literal meaning) idioms were read faster than low-literalness items, and the same effect was found when the familiarity of the figurative meaning of the idioms was taken into account. Also, Cronk et al (1993) reported independent correlations of subjective frequency measures of idioms (one measure assessing how often [on a 1-5 scale] raters had heard the idioms used figuratively and another measure assessing how often [1-5 scale] they had heard them used literally). Furthermore, the familiarity of idioms is correlated with the ability to define them (Chan & Marinellie, 2008).…”

“…However, as of yet, only a few studies have been specifically dedicated to the collection of norms for idiomatic expressions. Such norms are available in English (Cronk, Lima, & Schweigert, 1993;Libben & Titone, 2008;Titone & Connine, 1994b) and in Italian (Tabossi et al, 2011). As was mentioned above, as far as French is concerned, we are aware of only one study that has reported norms for 300 idiomatic expressions (Caillies, 2009).…”