汉语惯用语的产生机制

惯用语是固定表达的一种。非构造观点认为, 惯用语已经词汇化, 惯用语理解是提取过程; 构造观点认为, 惯用语意义是建构的, 成分的字面意义对惯用语理解起重要作用。混合模型认为, 惯用语既有整体表征, 又有成分单词表征, 二者都可以成为表征和通达的单元。通过三个实验, 考察了汉语惯用语的产生机制。实验1考察在惯用语产生中是否存在整体表征和成分表征; 实验2考察在惯用语产生中是否存在从成分单词或成分词素表征到整体表征的激活; 实验3考察在惯用语产生中是否存在从整体表征到成分单词或成分词素的激活。结果表明: (1) 汉语惯用语属于混合表征, 既有整体表征, 又有成分单词、成分词素表征; (2)成分词素表征是惯用语整体表征和成分单词表征联结的桥梁; (3) 语义可分性影响惯用语表征。     

预测性、语义倾向性对惯用语理解的影响

通过两个移动窗口阅读实验,探讨了不同预测性和语义倾向性的惯用语在不同语境下的阅读时间。实验一发现：倾向字面意义的惯用语在比喻意义语境下有抑制效应;倾向比喻意义的惯用语在字面意义语境下有抑制效应。实验二发现：低预测性惯用语在比喻意义语境下有抑制效应;高预测性惯用语在字面意义语境下有抑制效应。研究结果否认了惯用语已词汇化的观点,支持了结构假说的观点,证明惯用语的理解是一个构造过程。     

汉语习语理解研究

研究宗旨是探讨中国成人对汉语中三字习语的加工处理问题。研究材料包括：（１）动宾结构的惯用语,既有比喻意义又有字面意义;（２）动宾结构的一般三字词组;（３）偏正结构的三字惯用语,既有比喻意义又有字面意义;（４）偏正结构的一般三字词组;（５）动宾结构的惯用语。只有比喻意义而无字面意义;（６）三字词。它们都是被试所熟悉的。向３５名成人呈现这些词语和（７）无意义三字组合,要求他们作意义判别。结果表明,所有惯用语的判断反应均无显著性差异,各组惯用语的判断反应时均慢于单词,而快于一般词组。实验结果基本支持两种意义同时加工,但比喻意义优先完成的假设。此外,文章还讨论了习语的词汇化等问题。     

Effects of changes in narrative time on eye movements and recognition responses

Abstract

Gibbs and O'Brien (1990) recently claimed that the images that people associate with everyday idioms reflect the deep conceptual metaphors that underlie the meanings of those idioms. However, because idiomatic strings can convey both a literal and an idiomatic meaning, people must be able to inhibit or ignore literal meanings if they are to produce mental images that uniquely reflect idiomatic meanings. We investigated the potential interference between literal and idiomatic meanings in three experiments. Experiment 1 used a mental-image production task similar to that used by Gibbs and O'Brien. Counter to Gibbs and O'Brien's claim, the images that we obtained referred overwhelmingly to the literal meanings of idiomatic strings rather than to their idiomatic meanings. Experiments 2 and 3 employed a paraphrase verification task to examine the effects of mental imagery on idiom comprehension. If the images associated with an idiom reflect that idiom's meaning, then imagery should facilitate comprehension. No evidence for facilitation was found in either experiment. Instead, imagery interfered with comprehension, as assessed by paraphrase verification time, both for idiomatic meanings and for literal, concrete meanings. We conclude that the images associated with idioms do not reflect idiom meanings.     

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。     

Reading comprehension and understanding idiomatic expressions: a developmental study

The aim of the present study was to investigate idiom comprehension in school-age Italian children with different reading comprehension skills. According to our hypothesis, the level of a child's text comprehension skills should predict his/her ability to understand idiomatic meanings. Idiom comprehension in fact requires children to go beyond a simple word-by-word comprehension strategy and to integrate figurative meaning into contextual information. In a preliminary phase, we used a standardized battery of tests (Cornoldi & Colpo, 1998) to assess the ability of second graders and fourth graders to comprehend written texts. Three groups were identified at each age level: good, medium, and poor comprehenders. Children were then presented with familiar idiomatic expressions which also have a literal meaning (e.g., "break the ice"). Idioms were embedded in short stories: in Experiment 1 only the idiomatic interpretation was contextually appropriate, in Experiment 2 a literal reading of the string was also plausible in the context. A multiple-choice task was used in both experiments: children were asked to choose one answer among three corresponding to: (a) the idiomatic meaning; (b) the literal meaning; and (c) an interpretation contextually appropriate but not connected with the idiomatic or literal meaning of the idiom string. The results of both experiments showed that the ability to understand a text indeed predicted children's understanding of idioms in context. To verify whether possible improvements in children's comprehension skills might produce an increase in figurative language understanding, Experiment 3 was carried out. A group of poor comprehenders who participated in Experiments 1 and 2 was tested eight months later. The results of Experiment 3 showed that children whose general comprehension skills improved their performance on an idiom comprehension test.     

That’s the way the cookie bounces: Syntactic and semantic components of experimentally elicited idiom blendsß

Idioms are sometimes viewed as unitized phrases with interpretations that are independent of the literal meanings of their individual words. In three experiments, the nature of idiom representation was explored with a speech-error elicitation task. In the task, speakers briefly viewed paired idioms. After a short delay they were probed to produce one of the two idioms, and their production latencies and blend errors were assessed. The first experiment showed greater interference between idioms with the same syntactic structure, demonstrating that idiom representations contain syntactic information. The second experiment indicated that the literal meaning of an idiom is active during production. These syntactic and literal-semantic effects on idiom errors argue against a representation of idioms as noncomponential lexicalized phrases. In the final experiment, no differences were found between decomposable and nondecomposable idioms, suggesting that the lexical representation of these two types of idioms is the same.     

Hemispheric asymmetries in processing L1 and L2 idioms: effects of salience and context

This study investigates the contribution of the left and right hemispheres to the comprehension of bilingual figurative language and the joint effects of salience and context on the differential cerebral involvement in idiom processing. The divided visual field and the lexical decision priming paradigms were employed to examine the activation of salient and nonsalient ambiguous idiom interpretations (i.e., literal vs. non-literal) in the two hemispheres. Literally plausible ambiguous idioms, L1 (Polish) and L2 (English), were embedded in unconstraining ambiguous (e.g., I knew he kept an ace up his sleeve) or constraining unambiguous context clearly favoring their conventional idiomatic interpretation (e.g., The debating president kept an ace up his sleeve). Idioms were presented centrally, followed by laterally presented targets related to the figurative (e.g., GAIN) or literal (e.g., SHIRT) meaning of the idiom and displayed at Interstimulus Intervals (ISIs) of 0 ms (Experiment 1), 300 ms (Experiment 2), and 800 ms (Experiment 3). Results indicate that context and salience effects are significantly modulated by the language (native vs. nonnative) of the stimulus materials being presented to each hemisphere. Literal facilitation was found for L2 idioms in all three ISI conditions, which supports the notion of the special status that literal meanings of L2 idioms enjoy in the course of their processing by nonnative language users. No significant differences were found between the right and left hemispheres in regards to their sensitivity to contextual constraints. Results are discussed in terms of the Graded Salience Hypothesis and the Fine/Coarse Coding Theory.     

Processing idiomatic expressions: effects of semantic compositionality

Three experiments tested the main claims of the idiom decomposition hypothesis: People have clear intuitions on the semantic compositionality of idiomatic expressions, which determines the syntactic behavior of these expressions and how they are recognized. Experiment 1 showed that intuitions are clear only for a very restricted number of expressions, but for the majority of idioms, they are not consistent across speakers. Experiment 2 failed to support the claim that semantic compositionality influences the syntactic flexibility of idioms. Finally, Experiment 3 showed that idioms are more quickly recognized than their literal counterparts, regardless of compositionality and syntactic flexibility. All of the findings were at odds with the tenets of the idiom decomposition hypothesis. The theoretical implications of the results with respect to idiom processing and the notion of compositionality are discussed.     

Idiom comprehension deficits in relation to corpus callosum agenesis and hypoplasia in children with spina bifida meningomyelocele

Idioms are phrases with figurative meanings that are not directly derived from the literal meanings of the words in the phrase. Idiom comprehension varies with: literality, whether the idiom is literally plausible; compositionality, whether individual words contribute to a figurative meaning; and contextual bias. We studied idiom comprehension in children with spina bifida meningomyelocele (SBM), a neurodevelopmental disorder associated with problems in discourse comprehension and agenesis and hypoplasia of the corpus callosum. Compared to age peers, children with SBM understood decomposable idioms (which are processed more like literal language) but not non-decomposable idioms (which require contextual analyses for acquisition). The impairment in non-decomposable idioms was related to congenital agenesis of the corpus callosum, which suggests that the consequences of impaired interhemispheric communication, whether congenital or acquired in adulthood, are borne more by configurational than by compositional language.     

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.     

Hemispheric processing of idioms in schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder

Studies conducted on individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show that they find it difficult to comprehend figurative language, and have a tendency to interpret it literally. This study examines hemispheric processing of idioms in patients with SZ, in comparison to individuals with ASD. Seventeen adults with SZ and 18 adults with ASD participated in the study. The two clinical groups were matched in age, vocabulary scores and verbal executive function scores. Using the divided visual field paradigm, the participants performed a lexical decision task for a target word related to either a literal or a figurative interpretation of an idiom. Whereas SZ patients showed the typical right lateralisation for non-salient literal interpretations of idioms, adults with ASD showed atypical bilateral processing. These findings indicate different hemispheric lateralisation in idiom processing in the two clinical groups.     

Effect of Representational Distance Between Meanings on Recognition of Ambiguous Spoken Words

Previous research indicates that mental representations of word meanings are distributed along both semantic and syntactic dimensions such that nouns and verbs are relatively distinct from one another. Two experiments examined the effect of representational distance between meanings on recognition of ambiguous spoken words by comparing recognition of unambiguous words, noun–verb homonyms, and noun–noun homonyms. In Experiment 1, auditory lexical decision was fastest for unambiguous words, slower for noun–verb homonyms, and slowest for noun–noun homonyms. In Experiment 2, response times for matching spoken words to pictures followed the same pattern and eye fixation time courses revealed converging, gradual time course differences between conditions. These results indicate greater competition between meanings of ambiguous words when the meanings are from the same grammatical class (noun–noun homonyms) than when they are from different grammatical classes (noun–verb homonyms).     

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

This study investigated the relationship between subjective frequency of literal usage (literalness), subjective frequency of figurative usage (familiarity), and mean Kucera and Francis (1967) word frequency for idiom phrases. Kucera and Francis frequency was found to be independent of both familiarity and literalness. Furthermore, it was found that literalness, but not the Kucera and Francis frequency of the words in the phrase, affected reading time for literal uses of idioms. For figurative uses of idioms, familiarity and written frequency interacted. A model of idiom processing consistent with the current results and previous results is proposed. In addition, subjective familiarity and literalness norms are provided for 245 idioms.Portions of the normative study were based upon subjects in Schweigert and Cronk (1992).     

首词和尾词频率对高熟悉度成语识别的影响

采用词汇判定法,考察首词频率和尾词频率对高熟悉度四字成语识别的影响。实验结果表明:(1)对高熟悉度成语的识别规律与多层聚类表征模型的观点比较吻合;(2)构成成语的成份词对成语表征有竞争和干扰作用,高频率成份词相对于低频率成份词,对成语表征的竞争和干扰作用较大。     

The locus of word frequency effects in skilled spelling-to-dictation

In spelling-to-dictation tasks, skilled spellers consistently initiate spelling of high-frequency words faster than that of low-frequency words. Tainturier and Rapp's model of spelling shows three possible loci for this frequency effect: spoken word recognition, orthographic retrieval, and response execution of the first letter. Thus far, researchers have attributed the effect solely to orthographic retrieval without considering spoken word recognition or response execution. To investigate word frequency effects at each of these three loci, Experiment 1 involved a delayed spelling-to-dictation task and Experiment 2 involved a delayed/uncertain task. In Experiment 1, no frequency effect was found in the 1200-ms delayed condition, suggesting that response execution is not affected by word frequency. In Experiment 2, no frequency effect was found in the delayed/uncertain task that reflects the orthographic retrieval, whereas a frequency effect was found in the comparison immediate/uncertain task that reflects both spoken word recognition and orthographic retrieval. The results of this two-part study suggest that frequency effects in spoken word recognition play a substantial role in skilled spelling-to-dictation. Discrepancies between these findings and previous research, and the limitations of the present study, are discussed.     

Comprehension of idiomatic expressions in Japanese—Auditory and visual presentations

This study reports on the auditory and visual comprehension of Japanese idioms having both literal and figurative meanings. Experiment I conducted the rating of the semantic distance between the two meanings. Experiment II investigated the difference of comprehension between semantically far and close idioms. Here the materials are presented in isolation both auditorily and visually. Experiment III conducted the same investigation as Experiment II, except that idioms were presented embedded in literally and figuratively induced contexts. Experiment IV reinvestigated the findings obtained from the previous experiments. The results of these experiments show that in isolation visual presentation precedes auditory presentation, and that both in the auditory and visual presentations semantically far idioms are comprehended more accurately than semantically close idioms.     

Do Nonnative Language Speakers Chew the Fat and Spill the Beans with Different Brain Hemispheres? Investigating Idiom Decomposability with the Divided Visual Field Paradigm

The purpose of this study was to explore possible cerebral asymmetries in the processing of decomposable and nondecomposable idioms by fluent nonnative speakers of English. In the study, native language (Polish) and foreign language (English) decomposable and nondecomposable idioms were embedded in ambiguous (neutral) and unambiguous (biasing figurative meaning) context and presented centrally, followed by laterally presented target words related to the figurative meaning of the idiom or literal meaning of the last word of the idiom. The target appeared either immediately at sentence offset (Experiment 1), or 400 ms (Experiment 2) after sentence offset. Results are inconsistent with the Idiom Decomposition Hypothesis (Gibbs et al. in Mem Cogn 17:58–68, 1989a; J Mem Lang 28:576–593, 1989b) and only partially consistent with the idea of the differential cerebral involvement in processing (non)decomposable idioms [the Fine/Coarse Coding Theory, Beeman (Right hemisphere language comprehension: perspectives from cognitive neuroscience, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ, 1998)]. A number of factors, rather than compositionality per se, emerge as crucial in determining idiom processing, such as language status (native vs. nonnative), salience, or context.     

Definitions of Idioms in Preadolescents, Adolescents, and Adults

The purpose of this study was to expand the current literature on word definitions by focusing on definitions of idioms provided by several age groups. Preadolescents, young adolescents, older adolescents, and adults wrote definitions for 10 frequently used idioms and also rated their familiarity with the idiomatic expressions. Participants’ definitions were scored based on the degree to which their definitions reflected use of critical elements (determined by a standard dictionary of idioms), use of examples or related/associated concepts, and errors. Significant age differences were found in both idiom familiarity and idiom definition tasks: both idiom familiarity and definitional skill improved with age. In addition, we found a positive correlation between idiom familiarity and idiom definition. Results are discussed with respect to age-related changes in definitional response types and understanding of figurative language.