veranstalter: Dr. Katherine Conklin (University of Nottingham)
ansprechpartner: Heike Behrens
email: heike.behrens@unibas.ch
web:
institution: HPSL
language: Englisch
location institution: Basel
date_raw: 28. Februar 2019, 12:00-14:00 Uhr
date_sort: 28.02.2019, 00:00:00

Abstract:

Is all formulaic language created equal? Understanding the processing advantage of formulaic language

As much as half of spoken discourse is made up of formulaic language or multi-word units. In other words, we tend to say things in the same way (“food and drink” not “drink and food”). Alongside of this, language users use formulaic language creatively (“he kicked the bucket” and “his bucket was kicked”). Psycholinguistic research has shown a processing advantage for formulaic language compared to ‘novel’ (non-formulaic) language across a variety of formulaic types: idioms, “break the ice”; collocations, “take a picture”; binomials, “salt and pepper”; lexical bundles, “do you play”, etc. However, little work has been done comparing the processing of different formulaic types with fundamentally different properties to ascertain the contribution of specific factors (e.g. frequency, predictability, semantic association, MI-score). In addition, it is not clear whether the processing advantage survives creative language use (e.g. passivization). I will explore the ‘formulaic advantage’ and the factors that underpin it across formulaic types, as well as whether the advantage persists when the conventional form of the phrase is manipulated.