Abstract
It is an established fact that idiomatic expressions are fast to process. However, the explanation of the phenomenon is controversial. Using a semantic judgment paradigm, where people decide whether a string is meaningful or not, the present experiment tested the predictions deriving from the three main theories of idiom recognition—the lexical representation hypothesis, the idiom decomposition hypothesis, and the configuration hypothesis. Participants were faster at judging decomposable idioms, nondecomposable idioms, and clichés than at judging their matched controls. The effect was comparable for all conventional expressions. The results were interpreted as suggesting that, as posited by the configuration hypothesis, the fact that they are known expressions, rather than idiomaticity, explains their fast recognition.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Boland, J. E., Tanenhaus, M. K., & Garnsey, S. M. (1990). Evidence for the immediate use of verb control information in sentence processing. Journal of Memory & Language, 29, 413–432.
Bortolini, U., Tagliavini, C., & Zampolli, A. (1972). Lessico di frequenza della lingua italiana contemporanea. Milan: Garzanti.
Burt, J. S. (1992). Against the lexical representation of idioms. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 46, 582–605.
Cacciari, C., & Tabossi, P. (1988). The comprehension of idioms. Journal of Memory & Language, 27, 668–683.
Caillies, S., & Butcher, K. (2007). Processing of idiomatic expressions: Evidence for a new hybrid view. Metaphor & Symbol, 22, 79–108.
Caillies, S., & Le Sourn-Bissaoui, S. (2006). Idiom comprehension in French children: A cock-and-bull story. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 3, 189–206.
Casadei, F. (2001). Breve dizionario di linguistica. Rome: Carocci.
Connine, C. M., Mullennix, J., Shernoff, E., & Yelen, J. (1990). Word familiarity and frequency in visual and auditory word recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 16, 1084–1096.
Cronk, B. C., Lima, S. D., & Schweigert, W. A. (1993). Idioms in sentences: Effects of frequency, literalness, and familiarity. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 22, 59–82.
Cronk, B. C., & Schweigert, W. A. (1992). The comprehension of idioms: The effects of familiarity, literalness, and usage. Applied Psycholinguistics, 13, 131–146.
Cutting, J. C., & Bock, K. (1997). That’s the way the cookie bounces: Syntactic and semantic components of experimentally elicited idiom blends. Memory & Cognition, 25, 57–71.
Gernsbacher, M. A. (1984). Resolving 20 years of inconsistent interactions between lexical familiarity and orthography, concreteness, and polysemy. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113, 256–281.
Gibbs, R. W., Jr. (1980). Spilling the beans on understanding and memory for idioms in conversation. Memory & Cognition, 8, 149–156.
Gibbs, R. W., Jr., Nayak, N. P., Bolton, J. L., & Keppel, M. E. (1989). Speakers’ assumptions about the lexical flexibility of idioms. Memory & Cognition, 17, 58–68.
Gibbs, R. W., Jr., Nayak, N. P., & Cutting, [J.] C. (1989). How to kick the bucket and not decompose: Analyzability and idiom processing. Journal of Memory & Language, 28, 576–593.
Giora, R., & Fein, O. (1999). On understanding familiar and lessfamiliar figurative language. Journal of Pragmatics, 31, 1601–1618.
Glass, A. L. (1983). The comprehension of idioms. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 12, 429–442.
Glucksberg, S. (2001). Understanding figurative language: From metaphors to idioms. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jackendoff, R. (1995). The boundaries of the lexicon. In M. Everaert, E.-J. van der Linden, A. Schenk, & R. Schreuder (Eds.), Idioms: Structural and psychological perspectives (pp. 133–165). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Kirkpatrick, B. (1996). Clichés: Neither a defence nor a condemnation. English Today, 12, 16–25.
Konopka, A. E., & Bock, K. (2009). Lexical or syntactic control of sentence formulation? Structural generalizations from idiom production. Cognitive Psychology, 58, 68–101.
Mateu, J., & Espinal, M. T. (2007). Argument structure and compositionality in idiomatic constructions. Linguistic Review, 24, 33–59.
McGlone, M. S., Glucksberg, S., & Cacciari, C. (1994). Semantic productivity and idiom comprehension. Discourse Processes, 17, 167–190.
Miller, G. A., & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1976). Language and perception. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Nunberg, G., Sag, I. A., & Wasow, T. (1994). Idioms. Language, 70, 491–534.
Ortony, A., Schallert, D. L., Reynolds, R. E., & Antos, S. J. (1978). Interpreting metaphors and idioms: Some effects of context on comprehension. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior, 17, 465–477.
Peterson, R. R., Burgess, C., Dell, G. S., & Eberhard, K. M. (2001). Dissociation between syntactic and semantic processing during idiom comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 27, 1223–1237.
Popiel, S. J., & McRae, K. (1988). The figurative and literal senses of idioms, or all idioms are not used equally. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 17, 475–487.
Quartu, B. M. (2000). Dizionario dei modi di dire della lingua italiana. Milan: RCS Libri.
Roelofs, A. (2003). Modeling the relation between the production and recognition of spoken word forms. In N. O. Schiller & A. S. Meyer (Eds.), Phonetics and phonology in language comprehension and production: Differences and similarities (pp. 115–158). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Schraw, G., Trathen, W., Reynolds, R. E., & Lapan, R. T. (1988). Preferences for idioms: Restrictions due to lexicalization and familiarity. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 17, 413–424.
Schweigert, W. A. (1986). The comprehension of familiar and less familiar idioms. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 15, 33–45.
Schweigert, W. A. (1991). The muddy waters of idiom comprehension. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 20, 305–314.
Schweigert, W. A., Cintron, J., Sullivan, K., Ilic, E., Ellis, S., Dobrowits, C., & Roberts, C. (2003). Novel figurative phrases and idioms: Phrase characteristics over multiple presentations. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 32, 455–475.
Schweigert, W. A., & Moates, D. R. (1988). Familiar idiom comprehension. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 17, 281–296.
Searle, J. (1975). Indirect speech acts. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Speech acts (Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3, pp. 59–82). New York: Academic Press.
Sprenger, S. A., Levelt, W. J. M., & Kempen, G. (2006). Lexical access during the production of idiomatic phrases. Journal of Memory & Language, 54, 161–184.
Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 18, 643–662.
Swinney, D. A., & Cutler, A. (1979). The access and processing of idiomatic expressions. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior, 18, 523–534.
Tabossi, P., Fanari, R., & Wolf, K. (2005). Spoken idiom recognition: Meaning retrieval and word expectancy. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 34, 465–495.
Tabossi, P., Fanari, R., & Wolf, K. (2008). Processing idiomatic expressions: Effects of semantic compositionality. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 34, 313–327.
Tabossi, P., & Zardon, F. (1993). The activation of idiomatic meaning in spoken language comprehension. In C. Cacciari & P. Tabossi (Eds.), Idioms: Processing, structure, and interpretation (pp. 145–162). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Tabossi, P., & Zardon, F. (1995). The activation of idiomatic meaning. In M. Everaert, E.-J. van der Linden, A. Schenk, & R. Schreuder (Eds.), Idioms: Structural and psychological perspectives (pp. 273–282). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Titone, D. A., & Connine, C. M. (1994a). Comprehension of idiomatic expressions: Effects of predictability and literality. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 20, 1126–1138.
Titone, D. A., & Connine, C. M. (1994b). Descriptive norms for 171 idiomatic expressions: Familiarity, compositionality, predictability, and literality. Metaphor & Symbolic Activity, 9, 247–270.
Trueswell, J. C., & Kim, A. E. (1998). How to prune a garden path by nipping it in the bud: Fast priming of verb argument structure. Journal of Memory & Language, 39, 102–123.
Van de Voort, M. E. C., & Vonk, W. (1995). You don’t die immediately when you kick an empty bucket: A processing view on semantic and syntactic characteristics of idioms. In M. Everaert, E.-J. van der Linden, A. Schenk, & R. Schreuder (Eds.), Idioms: Structural and psychological perspectives (pp. 283–300). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Wray, A. (2002). Formulaic language and the lexicon. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
The research was supported by PRIN 2005.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Tabossi, P., Fanari, R. & Wolf, K. Why are idioms recognized fast?. Memory & Cognition 37, 529–540 (2009). https://doi.org/10.3758/MC.37.4.529
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/MC.37.4.529