Siyanova-Chanturia, A. 1, 2 , Conklin, K. 2 , Kaan, E. 3 & van Heuven, W. 2
1 University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
2 University of Nottingham
3 University of Florida
Previous research suggests that frequent multiword sequences may be represented in the mental lexicon along with morphemes and words. Such studies provide evidence for a processing advantage for frequent versus infrequent phrases. While such behavioural research is informative, it tells us little about the mechanisms involved in phrasal processing above and beyond the speed of processing. In Experiment 1a, participants read frequent phrases (knife and fork), infrequent but strongly associated phrases (spoon and fork), and semantic violations (theme and fork). In Experiment 1b, participants read the same stimuli without “and”. Experiment 2 investigated the processing of frequent phrases, their reversed forms, and semantic violations in a sentence context. An N400 was observed for semantic violations. Further, frequent phrases elicited smaller N400s than associated phrases (Experiment 1a), suggesting easier semantic integration. In addition, they elicited the P300 both in (Experiment 2) and out (Experiment 1a) of context. We attribute this finding to the phenomenon of “template matching”, wherein the target sequence activates a template that matches the upcoming information. Crucially, in Experiment 1b, where items were presented without “and”, no differences were observed between frequent phrases (knife-fork) and associates (spoon-fork). This finding implies that what drives the difference between frequent phrases and associates in Experiment 1a is the phrasal status of binomials, which is why this difference disappears in Experiment 1b, where word sequences are no longer presented in their phrasal, uniquely identifiable, form. The above findings suggest that different neural correlates underlie the processing of familiar and novel language, as evidenced by increased P300s and reduced N400s for the former. Our findings are in line with the view, according to which frequent multiword sequences are characterized by a reduced processing load.