Native speakers kick buckets, but learners kick doors: A comparison of native and nonnative idiom comprehension

Multiword expressions-also called multiword chunks, fixed expressions, lexical bundles, or formulaic sequences-are familiar sequences of words that occur with high frequency in language. Recent focus on multiword expressions, as distinct units of language with distinct processing ramifications, raises the question of how they are used during second language processing: Although processing of multiword expressions appears to grow more native-like as proficiency increases, even highly proficient L2 speakers may not process multiword expressions in entirely native-like ways. We conducted a visual world eye tracking study of idiom comprehension to examine how the balance between compositional and whole-phrase processing changes in second language comprehension. L1 and advanced L2 English speakers listened to sentences consisting of a literal or figurative biasing context clause and a target clause with the final word missing, while simultaneously viewing images representing possible literal or figurative continuations of the clause. Growth curve analysis of eye movement data provided suggestive evidence that L1 and L2 speakers were biased towards different processing strategies during idiom comprehension, with L2 speakers, in particular, taking a more compositional approach towards computing figurative meaning. We also found evidence of qualitative processing differences between literal and figurative expressions, with literal processing being strongly driven by anticipatory mechanisms and figurative processing being driven by within-phrase associations for both groups.