On the Psycholinguistic Activation of Idioms’ Parts

Authors

  • Brandon Short

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6017/lf.v2i1.5446

Abstract

This article examines the psycholinguistic "activation" of idioms and their constituent parts. It considers whether idioms are activated as units or whether and to what extent they psycholinguistically "activate" or "prime" the mental lexical entries for each individual word within the individual. This is an imporatant question because the unique characteristic of idioms that often, the meaning of the idiom taken as a synthetic whole has little or nothing to do with the meanings of its ingredient parts.

References

Gibbs, Raymond W., Jr. "On the Process of Understanding Idioms." Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 14.5 (1985): 465-72. Print.

Holsinger, Ed, and Elsi Kaiser. "An Experimental Investigation of Semantic and Syntactic Effects on Idiom Recognition." (n.d.): n. pag. Print. University of Southern California, Dept. of Linguistics, Los Angeles, CA

Shoebottom. "Idioms." Idioms. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Dec. 2012. <http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/easy/idioms.htm>.

Swinney, David A., and Anne Cutler. "The Access and Processing of Idiomatic Expressions." Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 18 (1979): 523-34. Print.

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Published

2014-08-19

How to Cite

Short, B. (2014). On the Psycholinguistic Activation of Idioms’ Parts. Lingua Frankly, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.6017/lf.v2i1.5446

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Articles