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Article published In:
Words & Constructions: Language complexity in linguistics and psychology
Edited by Juhani Järvikivi, Pirita Pyykkönen-Klauck and Matti Laine
[The Mental Lexicon 9:2] 2014
► pp. 267–293

Processing multiword idiomatic strings

Many words in one?

| University of Modena

Idioms are strings of words whose figurative meaning does not necessarily derive from that of the constituent parts. They belong to the vast and heterogeneous realm of multiword expressions, i.e. literal and non-literal word clusters whose representations are stored in semantic memory. This article provides an updated review of the psycholinguistic and electrophysiological literature on the processes underlying idiom comprehension with specific reference to the cues that lead to idiom recognition, to the syntactic and semantic behavior of idioms, to the relationships between literal compositionality and idiomatic meaning retrieval. Behavioral models of idiom comprehension are presented and discussed also with respect to the electrophysiological correlates of idiom and figurative language comprehension.

Keywords: comprehension, syntax, production, meaning compositionality, figurative meaning, semantic transparency, predictability, semantic representation, event-related brain potentials, idiom
Published online: 21 November 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.9.2.05cac
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[no author supplied]
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This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.