Idiom meaning selection following a prior context: eye movement evidence of L1 direct retrieval and L2 compositional assembly

Abstract

Past work has suggested that L1 readers retrieve idioms (i.e., spill the tea) directly vs. matched literal controls (drink the tea) following unbiased contexts, whereas L2 readers process idioms more compositionally. However, it is unclear whether this occurs when a figuratively or literally biased context precedes idioms. We tested this in an eye-tracking study in which 40 English-L1 and 35 English-L2 adults read English sentences containing idioms having figurative, literal, or control prior contexts. Linear mixed-effects models revealed that L1 readers processed idioms faster after a literal preamble; however, at the disambiguation region, they processed idioms’ figurative interpretations more quickly as familiarity increased, suggesting a L1 reliance on direct retrieval. In contrast, L2 readers processed idioms’ figurative interpretations faster as verb decomposability increased, suggesting an L2 reliance on compositional assembly. Collectively, these results suggest that meaning selection occurs in a hybrid fashion when idioms follow a biased context.