Reimer Laura, Smolka Eva
Institute of German Studies, University of Münster, Münster, Germany.
Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2023 May 4;14:1123917. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1123917. eCollection 2023.
Psycholinguistic research remains puzzled about the circumstances under which syntactically transformed idioms keep their figurative meaning. There is an abundance of linguistic and psycholinguistic studies that have examined which factors may determine why some idioms are more syntactically fixed than others, including transparency, compositionality, and syntactic frozenness; however, they have returned inconclusive, sometimes even conflicting, results. This is the first study to examine argument structure (i.e., the number of arguments a verb takes) and argument adjacency (i.e., the position of the critical arguments relative to the verb) and their effects on the processing of idiomatic and literal sentences in German. Our results suggest that neither the traditional models of idiom processing (according to which idioms are stored as fixed entries) nor more recent hybrid theories (which concede some compositional handling in addition to a fixed entry) adequately account for the effects of argument structure or argument adjacency. Therefore, this study challenges existing models of idiom processing.
In two sentence-completion experiments, participants listened to idiomatic and literal sentences in both active and passive voice without the sentence-final verb. They indicated which of three visually-presented verbs best completed the sentence. We manipulated the factor argument structure within experiments and argument adjacency across experiments. In Experiment 1, passivized three-argument sentences had the critical argument adjacent to the verb while two-argument sentences had the critical argument non-adjacent to the verb, and vice versa in Experiment 2.
In both experiments, voice interacted with argument structure. Active sentences-both literal and idiomatic-showed equivalent processing of two- and three-argument sentences. However, passive sentences returned contrasting effects. In Experiment 1, three-argument sentences were processed faster than two-argument sentences and vice versa in Experiment 2. This pattern corresponds to faster processing when critical arguments are adjacent than non-adjacent.
The results point to the dominant role of argument adjacency over the number of arguments in the processing of syntactically transformed sentences. Regarding idiom processing, we conclude that the adjacency of the verb to its critical arguments determines whether passivized idioms keep their figurative meaning and present the implications of this finding for relevant models of idiom processing.
心理语言学研究对于句法转换习语在何种情况下能保留其比喻意义仍感到困惑。有大量的语言学和心理语言学研究探讨了哪些因素可能决定为何有些习语在句法上比其他习语更固定，包括透明度、组合性和句法冻结性；然而，这些研究得出的结果尚无定论，有时甚至相互矛盾。这是第一项研究德语中论元结构（即动词所带论元的数量）和论元邻接性（即关键论元相对于动词的位置）及其对习语和字面句子加工影响的研究。我们的结果表明，无论是传统的习语加工模型（根据该模型，习语作为固定条目存储）还是最近的混合理论（除了固定条目外还承认一些组合处理）都不能充分解释论元结构或论元邻接性的影响。因此，本研究对现有的习语加工模型提出了挑战。
在两个句子完成实验中，参与者听主动和被动语态的习语和字面句子，但句子末尾没有动词。他们指出三个视觉呈现的动词中哪一个最能完成句子。我们在实验中操纵了论元结构因素，在不同实验中操纵了论元邻接性。在实验1中，被动化的三论元句子中关键论元与动词相邻，而双论元句子中关键论元与动词不相邻，在实验2中情况则相反。
在两个实验中，语态与论元结构相互作用。主动句子——无论是字面的还是习语的——对双论元和三论元句子的加工表现出相同的情况。然而，被动句子呈现出相反的效果。在实验1中，三论元句子的加工速度比双论元句子快，在实验2中则相反。这种模式表明，当关键论元相邻时比不相邻时加工速度更快。
结果表明在句法转换句子的加工中，论元邻接性比论元数量起主导作用。关于习语加工，我们得出结论，动词与其关键论元的邻接性决定了被动化习语是否保留其比喻意义，并阐述了这一发现对相关习语加工模型的启示。
