Article published In:
The Mental LexiconVol. 6:3 (2011) ► pp.393–413
Processing light verb constructions
Henry gave Elsa a kiss give kiss give a kiss
We test two approaches to light verb constructions: (1) joint predication in light verb constructions is stored as pre-specified, and their high frequency predicts less processing cost. (2) Joint predication in light verb constructions is built in real-time. The entailed extra-syntactic composition predicts greater cost.
Results from a cross-modal lexical decision task show delayed, higher reaction times for light verb constructions, supporting (2), which is consistent with a linguistic architecture that has partly autonomous lexico-semantic storage and processing.
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