English idioms in the first language and second language lexicon: a ...

Beate Abel 3491996b; 1997). Therefore, the same factors should account for theirspecific representations.The differences described in the fourth assumption have beenempirically supported. In Studies 1 and 2, nonnatives showed ageneral tendency to judge idioms as being decomposable, whereasnatives more often judged them as being nondecomposable.Nonnatives who read English texts daily and thus come acrossidioms more frequently, which leads to the development of idiomentries, start to judge idioms as nondecomposable, just as nativesdo. Furthermore, the fourth assumption is supported by statementsgiven by the nonnative participants. In the biographicalquestionnaire, they were asked what they do if they encounter anunknown idiom in an English text. The majority answered that theyconsider the literal meaning of the constituents and then try to puttogether the idiomatic meaning of the whole phrase. In this process,contextual and conceptual factors play an important role. Theseutterances show that nonnatives actually ‘decompose’, whereasnatives do not have to consider the constituent meaning, becausethey activate their existing idiom entry. In terms of Giora’s gradedsalience hypothesis (Giora, 1997; 1999; Giora and Fein, 1999) thiscan be interpreted as a difference in salience for the two groups.Giora (1999: 919) assumes that ‘the salient meaning of a word oran expression is its lexicalized meaning, i.e., the meaning retrievablefrom the mental lexicon rather than from the context’. Thisindicates that for natives, the figurative meaning of an idiom ishighly salient, which is reflected in the existence of an idiom entry,whereas for nonnatives it is less salient and leads them to activatetheir constituent entries. 10The DIR Model makes more assumptions than the four discussedabove (see Abel, 2003). For example, it considers the generalorganization and structure of the lexicon. In accordance withTabossi and Zardon (1993), it is assumed that access to the idiomentry is only possible after the first constituent entry has beenactivated. Furthermore it postulates that lexical redundancy rules(Jackendoff, 1975) link the constituent and idiom entries and thatfor decomposable idioms the semantic links between the variouslexical entries are stronger than in the case of nondecomposable10The compatibility between the model suggested here and Giora’s graded saliencehypothesis is due to the factors that influence decomposability and salience. Giora (1997:185) states that ‘[t]he salience of a word or an utterance is a function of its conventionality. . ., familiarity . . ., frequency . . ., or givenness status in a certain (linguistic or nonlinguistic)context.’ As has been argued here, these factors determine judgements aboutdecomposability as well (for a similar approach, see Titone and Connine, 1999).Downloaded from http://slr.sagepub.com at Shanghai Jiaotong University on March 7, 2009