Seeing a phrase “time and again” matters: The role of phrasal frequency in the processing of multiword sequences.

Abstract

Are speakers sensitive to the frequency with which phrases occur in language? The authors report an eye-tracking study that investigates this by examining the processing of multiword sequences that differ in phrasal frequency by native and proficient nonnative English speakers. Participants read sentences containing 3-word binomial phrases (bride and groom) and their reversed forms (groom and bride), which are identical in syntax and meaning but that differ in phrasal frequency. Mixed-effects modeling revealed that native speakers and nonnative speakers, across a range of proficiencies, are sensitive to the frequency with which phrases occur in English. Results also indicate that native speakers and higher proficiency nonnatives are sensitive to whether a phrase occurs in a particular configuration (binomial vs. reversed) in English, highlighting the contribution of entrenchment of a particular phrase in memory.

Phrase frequency effects in language production

“…This finding is in line with previous studies in the field of language production that have examined the impact of phrase frequency on measures of phonological reduction [26], and agrees with findings from the field of language comprehension [17,[20][21][22][23][24][25]. For example, as discussed in the Introduction, Arnon and Snider [17] found that recognition times of multi-word phrases were sensitive to the frequency with which the phrases appeared in the language.…”

“…This view assumes that the language system is sensitive to the distribution of linguistic information at grain-sizes beyond individual words. Within such a system, the observed phrase frequency effect might reflect transitional probabilities between individually stored words [46][47][48], the connection weights between low-level input and higher level output representations [5][6][7], or the retrieval of multi-word chunks from memory [20,26]. A pertinent question for future research would be to distinguish between these three possible explanations of the phrase frequency effects observed here.…”

How hierarchical is language use?

“…Only the overall familiarity of the specific construction should affect processing. The fact that both children and adults are sensitive to the overall frequency of multi-word combinations [72][73][74][75] supports this prediction 2 , but further studies are needed to determine how closely the representations of frequent 'flat' word sequences resemble that of possibly hierarchical constructions and idioms.…”

The Processing on Different Types of English Formulaic Sequences

“…8, No. 8;2015 Since in this study, the reaction time for written formulaic sequences is significantly shorter than that of idioms, we did a post hoc analysis on their frequency differences. We compared the frequency lists of both types, and found that the average frequency of written formulaic sequences (average frequency in BNC= 4667) are significantly higher than that of the idioms (average frequency in BNC=296) (p=.000).…”

“…A recent eye-tracking study by Siyanova-Chanturia, Conklin and Van Heuven (2011) investigated processing of formulaic sequences with different phrasal frequency. It has been revealed that first, frequent formulaic sequences are processed faster than less frequent ones; second, regardless of frequency, native speakers processed the entrenched binomials significantly faster than reversed forms.…”