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Reference
Gibbs, R. W., Nayak, N. P., & Cutting, J. C. (1989). How to kick the bucket
and not decompose: Analyzability and idiom processing. Journal of Memory
and Language, 28, 576-593.
Abstract
Idiomatic phrases differ in their degree of analyzability. Some idioms are
highly decomposable with the meanings of their parts contributing independently
to their overall figurative meanings (e.g., pop the question can be decomposed
into pop meaning "suddenly make" and the question referring to "a marriage
proposal"). Other idioms are nondecomposable because it is difficult to see
any relation between a phrase's individual components and the idiom's figurative
meaning (e.g., the parts of kick the bucket do not independently contribute to
the figurative meaning of the phrase "to die"). The present studies
investigated the role of analyzability or semantic decomposition in idiom
processing. We expected that nondecomposable idioms should be processed more
quickly than decomposable phrases because expressions such as kick the
bucket are lexicalized and should be easier to access from the mental lexicon.
However, Experiment 1 showed that nondecomposable idioms were processed more
slowly than analyzable idiom phrases. Experiment 2 and 3 indicated that
previous research demonstrating a processing advantage for syntactically
frozen idioms was due to their degree of semantic decomposition. The
results of these experiments suggest that idioms are initially processed in
a compositional manner similar to understanding of more literal language.
However, people still do not necessarily analyze the literal meanings of
idioms during understanding of these figurative phrases.
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Last Modified: 31 July 1998
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