Delayed prediction of idiom constituent meaning points to weak holistic multi-word representation in children

ABSTRACT

While generative accounts of language processing assume that children break down language into smaller components on which they apply computational operations, usage-based accounts assume that children acquire frequently co-occurring words as large chunks, which they decompose only later in development. We investigated the evidence for the multi-word representation of idioms like to let the cat out of the bag in 9- to 10-year-olds using eye-tracking and Event-Related Potentials. Both measures indicated that children rapidly predict idiom-final words (bag). However, although they are generally capable of rapidly predicting semantic associates for highly predictive endings of novel sentences (as demonstrated in a control experiment), within idioms they activate semantic associates (basket) only in a late processing stage. We conclude that children rapidly activate multi-word units for idioms and decompose these units only after a short delay during online processing. This effect might relate to unitary acquisition of idioms as assumed by usage-based accounts.

KEYWORDS:

• usage-based accounts
• idioms
• semantic expectancy
• ERP
• eye-tracking

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Julia Blumenthal, Stacie Mae Boswell, Babette Jakobi, Sören Koch, Julia-Larissa Maier, Dr. Anne Rau, Johanna Schläger, Holger Schneider, Charlotte Veil and Miriam Wild. We also warmly thank all children that participated in the experiments as well as their parents. This work was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – Project-ID 75650358 – SFB 833. The founding source had no involvement in the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft: [Grant Number 75650358].