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Updated: Jun 28, 2026

Examining Online Syntactic Processing of Spoken Complex Sentences in Chinese Using Dual-Modal Interference Tasks
Published on: September 5, 2019
The multidetermined nature of idiom processing.
Maya R Libben1, Debra A Titone
1Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.
Idiom comprehension models debate when meaning is processed. This study found high familiarity aids understanding, but semantic decomposability is only helpful for explicit judgments, not early processing.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Cognitive Science
- Linguistics
Background:
- Models of idiom comprehension propose different timings for compositional analysis.
- Some models suggest early analysis, while others propose late analysis after direct retrieval, especially for familiar idioms.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate competing models of idiom comprehension.
- To investigate the roles of familiarity, decomposability, and word frequency in idiom processing.
Main Methods:
- Four experiments using online and offline comprehension measures.
- Analysis of normative characteristics of 219 idioms, including decomposability, familiarity, and word frequency.
- Relating these dimensions to various online measures of idiom comprehension.
Main Results:
- High idiom familiarity consistently correlated with better comprehension.
- Semantic decomposability facilitated comprehension only in tasks requiring overt semantic judgment.
- Word frequency, but not verb decomposability, influenced comprehension in some measures.
Conclusions:
- Figurative meaning in idiom comprehension emerges from time-dependent linguistic constraints.
- Decomposability plays a minimal role in the initial stages of idiom comprehension.
- Findings support a model where multiple constraints interact over time during comprehension.
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