Adding a Piece to the Puzzle: Children’s Exposure to Idioms

Abstract

Idioms are figurative multiword expressions that need to be learned as part of the native phrasal vocabulary. While it has been shown that non-figurative multiword expressions are acquired with language exposure, the learning process for idioms may be different because the figurative meaning adds complexity to the learning task. Idiom vocabulary overall develops relatively late, but it is unknown to what extent children are exposed to idioms, and what kinds of idioms they encounter. Here, we investigated children’s idiom exposure and its effect on the development of idiom vocabulary in three studies: we explore the frequency of a well-tested set of Dutch idioms in a corpus of child literature, test idiom familiarity in a controlled setting in primary school children, and compare those findings to a set of online familiarity ratings. We find that children’s idiom exposure differs from adult idiom exposure, when comparing idiom frequencies based on children’s books and a corpus with resources for adults. Idiom decomposability and idiom frequencies from the children’s books, but not frequencies from the adult corpus, influenced the familiarity ratings of older children, suggesting that language exposure and idiom characteristics, such as decomposability, both play a role in idiom acquisition.