Ratings of the familiarity of idioms’ figurative meanings and the likelihood of literal meanings among U.S. college students

Samples of college students from three states (Ohio, New Hampshire, Illinois) rated 390 idioms on familiarity of their figurative meanings. The Illinois samples also rated the likelihood of encountering the idioms’ literal meanings. Results suggested some modest regional differences in idiom familiarity, and consistent with Popiel and McRae (1988), the likelihood of encountering an idiom’s literal meaning is relatively independent of the familiarity of its figurative meaning. The 314 idioms rated by more than 75% of the subjects are listed with the idioms’ familiarity ratings, as are the 20 most and least familiar idioms for each of the three states. The 248 idioms rated by at least 75% of the Illinois subjects and the idioms’ figurative and literal ratings are also presented.     

The figurative and literal senses of idioms,or all idioms are not used equally

Two groups of college students (40 and 56) gave what they felt to be the literal and figurative interpretation of 30 different idiomatic expressions and rated their interpretations for frequency of use and for familiarity. Ratings were done on 7-point scales where 1=never and 7=very often. Subjects gave higher ratings to figurative interpretations than to literal interpretations and higher ratings of frequency than familiarity. Nevertheless, there was a high correlation between ratings of frequency and familiarity. It was also found that figurative ratings were independent of literal ratings. In the main, figurative ratings were found to be high (5–7) irrespective of their literal ratings. A small subgroup of idioms, however, had relatively low ratings on both scales. The differences noted between idioms may help to account for certain discrepancies that have appeared in recent experimental studies on idiom processing.     

Comprehending idioms cross-linguistically

Speakers of three different languages (English, Latvian, and Mandarin) rated sets of idioms from their language for the analyzability of the relationship between each phrase's literal and figurative meaning. For each language, subsets of idioms were selected based on these ratings. Latvian and Mandarin idioms were literally translated into English. Across three experiments, people classified idioms from the three languages according to their figurative meanings. Response times and error rates indicate that participants were able to interpret unfamiliar (e.g., other languages') idioms depending largely on the degree to which they were analyzable, and that different forms of processing were used both within and between languages depending on this analyzability. Results support arguments for a continuum of analyzability (Bortfeld & McGlone, 2001), along which figurative speech ranges from reflecting general conceptual structures to specific cultural and historical references.     

语义分解性在惯用语理解中的作用

惯用语是比喻性语言的一种。语义分解性的作用是惯用语理解机制争论的焦点。通过语义启动任务, 探究了汉语动宾结构的惯用语和偏正结构的惯用语的意义理解模式, 揭示语义分解性在短的SOA (300 ms)和长的SOA (800 ms)下的作用。结果发现, 语义分解性独立地影响惯用语的意义激活：当SOA短时, 语义高分解的两类惯用语均表现出显著的字面义激活效应; 当SOA长时, 语义低分解的偏正结构的惯用语的意义激活的正确率优势明显。同时, 两类惯用语的语义分解性不同导致了语义激活启动效应的差异：当SOA短时, 语义低分解的动宾结构的惯用语存在两种意义的激活效应, 语义高分解的动宾结构的惯用语和偏正结构的惯用语存在字面义的激活效应; 当SOA长时, 语义低分解的动宾结构的惯用语存在两种意义的激活效应, 语义高分解的偏正结构的惯用语存在比喻义的激活效应。研究证实语义分解性在惯用语加工早期即发挥作用, 在加工晚期, 语义高分解的动宾结构的惯用语的多种意义同时激活削弱了两种意义的启动优势。整个研究结果支持惯用语理解的混合表征模型和层级显性意义假说。     

BEYOND LITERAL MEANINGS: The Psychology of Allusion

When people understand expressions that are intended nonliterally, two kinds of meaning are simultaneously apprehended: the literal meanings of the words themselves and the speaker's intended figurative meaning. Standard models of language comprehension assume that the literal meanings of figurative expressions are rejected in favor of a nonliteral meaning. I propose an alternative approach in which literal meanings are systematically used to convey figurative meanings through the process of allusion: The use of an expression to refer to entities or situations that are prototypical exemplars of culturally shared concepts and symbols. This approach provides an account of how people use and understand figurative language in general, and metaphor and idioms in particular.     

Even with a green card,you can be put out to pasture and still have to work: Non-native intuitions of the transparency of common English idioms

Native speakers of English use idioms such as put your foot down and spill the beans to label events that are not described literally by the words that compose the idioms. For many such expressions, the idiomatic meanings are transparent; that is, the connection between the literal expression and its figurative meaning makes sense to native speakers. We tested Keysar and Bly's (1995) hypothesis that this sense of transparency for the meaning of everyday idioms does not necessarily obtain because the idiomatic meanings are derived from motivating literal meanings or conceptual metaphors, but rather (at least in part) because language users construct explanations after the fact for whatever meaning is conventionally assigned to the expression. Non-native speakers of English were exposed to common English idioms and taught either the conventional idiomatic meaning or an alternative meaning. In agreement with Keysar and Bly's suggestion, their subsequent sense of transparency was greater for the meaning that the speakers had learned and used, regardless of which one it was.     

前后语境在汉语成语义识别中的作用

通过自定步速阅读实验研究发现,语境前后位置对成语义识别有显著性影响,且影响方式和程度存在差异,符合多义词重组通达模型。根据动态自组织模式,句子中的成语义识别至少包括多种潜在词义启动和与语境倾向义匹配两个过程。前置语境对成语比喻义通达具有预设作用,加速或抑制成语比喻义通达;而后置语境则在句子语义整合过程中对成语比喻义起到返查纠偏的作用。     

Preferences for idioms: Restrictions due to lexicalization and familiarity

Two experiments examined the hypothesis that preferences for figurative interpretations of common idioms depend on both lexicalization and the degree of familiarity of the phrase's idiomatic meaning. Experiment I reported that native English speakers understood both high and low familiarity idioms as lexicalized units while nonnatives did not. Experiment 2 found that preferences for idiomatic interpretations depended on the degree of familiarity only when idioms were recognized as lexicalized units. It was concluded that both lexicalization and familiarity contribute to the likelihood of idiomatic preferences, while only lexicalization contributes significantly to the comprehension of idiomatic meanings.     

The comprehension of idioms

Four experiments will performed to examine how familiar idioms are interpreted. Subjects had to respond as rapidly as possible whether an idiom had the same or different meaning as a phrase which, on half of the trials, was a paraphrase of either the figurative or literal meaning of the idiom. When subjects were instructed to respond on the basis of either figurative or literal meaning, idioms were matched to their literal and figurative paraphrases equally rapidly. When subjects were instructed to respond only on the basis of literal meaning, idiom-phrase pairs that shared a figurative interpretation took longer to reject as different than idiom pairs that shared no interpretation. These results domonstrated that whenever a familiar idiom is comprehended, both its literal and figurative interpretations are made.     

Idiom literality judgments in younger and older adults: age-related effects in resolving semantic interference

To study age effects in the resolution of idiomatic semantic ambiguity, we focus on decomposability, the extent to which a literal reading of an idiom's words shares meaning with its figurative interpretation. Younger and older adults judged whether decomposable and nondecomposable idioms and nonidioms had a literal interpretation. Older adults were slower at making literality judgments and more sensitive to conflicts between literal and figurative meanings. The results support claims of decompositional analysis of idioms during later processing stages and of obligatory activation of figurative meanings. They also lend support to research that has shown age-related effects in ambiguity resolution.