Speedy Metonymy, Tricky Metaphor, Irrelevant Compositionality: How Nonliteralness Affects Idioms in Reading and Rating

It is widely acknowledged that fixed expressions such as idioms have a processing advantage over non-idiomatic language. While many idioms are metaphoric, metonymic, or even literal, the effect of varying nonliteralness in their processing has not been much researched yet. Theoretical and empirical...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of psycholinguistic research 2019-12, Vol.48 (6), p.1285-1310
Main Author: Michl, Diana
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Behavioral Science and Psychology
Cognitive Psychology
Comparative Analysis
Compositionality
Figurative Language
Humans
Idioms
Language Processing
Metaphor
Metonymy
Psycholinguistics
Psychology
Reaction Time - physiology
Reading
Reading Processes
Reading Rate
Second Language Learning
Semantics
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Summary:It is widely acknowledged that fixed expressions such as idioms have a processing advantage over non-idiomatic language. While many idioms are metaphoric, metonymic, or even literal, the effect of varying nonliteralness in their processing has not been much researched yet. Theoretical and empirical findings suggest that metonymies are easier to process than metaphors but it is unclear whether this applies to idioms. Two self-paced reading experiments test whether metonymic, metaphoric, or literal idioms have a greater processing advantage over non-idiomatic control sentences, and whether this is caused by varying nonliteralness. Both studies find that metonymic and literal idioms are read significantly faster than controls, while the advantage for metaphoric idioms is only tenuous. Only experiment 2 finds literal idioms to be read fastest of all. As compositionality of the idioms cannot account for these findings, some effect of nonliteralness is suggested, together with idiomaticity and the sentential context.
ISSN:0090-6905
1573-6555
DOI:10.1007/s10936-019-09658-7