Abstract
We ask whether word order preferences for binomial expressions of the form A and B (e.g. bread and butter) are driven by abstract linguistic knowledge of ordering constraints referencing the semantic, phonological, and lexical properties of the constituent words, or by prior direct experience with the specific items in questions. Using forced-choice and self-paced reading tasks, we demonstrate that online processing of never-before-seen binomials is influenced by abstract knowledge of ordering constraints, which we estimate with a probabilistic model. In contrast, online processing of highly frequent binomials is primarily driven by direct experience, which we estimate from corpus frequency counts. We propose a trade-off wherein processing of novel expressions relies upon abstract knowledge, while reliance upon direct experience increases with increased exposure to an expression. Our findings support theories of language processing in which both compositional generation and direct, holistic reuse of multi-word expressions play crucial roles.
Highlights
When we encounter common expressions like I don't know or bread and butter, do we process them word-by-word or do we treat them as holistic chunks? Research on sentence processing has largely focused on how single words are combined into larger utterances, but intuitively it seems that high frequency multi-word expressions might be processed holistically, even if they could in principle be treated compositionally
We set out to test whether abstract knowledge and direct experience predict ordering preferences in a forced-choice preference task for both novel and frequently attested binomial expressions
We demonstrate that preferences of both attested and novel expressions are affected by abstract knowledge and that preferences of attested expressions are strongly predicted by relative frequency
Summary
When we encounter common expressions like I don't know or bread and butter, do we process them word-by-word or do we treat them as holistic chunks? Research on sentence processing has largely focused on how single words are combined into larger utterances, but intuitively it seems that high frequency multi-word expressions might be processed holistically, even if they could in principle be treated compositionally. The primary diagnostic for this question is whether the frequency of occurrence of multiword expressions is predictive of their behavior in language processing Such frequency effects are well documented at the level of individual words: more frequent words are faster to read (Inhoff and Rayner, 1986; Rayner and Duffy, 1986; Rayner et al, 1996), more likely to be skipped in reading (Rayner et al, 1996; Rayner and Well, 1996), and more susceptible to phonetic reduction (Bybee, 1999; Gregory et al, 1999). A traditional view of grammar does not include holistic representations of multi-word expressions According to this view, there is a strict separation between the individual words of a language and the rules for combining them. As Pinker (2000) explains, one key motivation for this theory is memory constraints on the representation of language knowledge: it is more efficient to store a single, widely applicable rule than to store each regular form individually
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