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

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Second Language Research 19,4 (2003); pp. 329–358English idioms in the first languageand second language lexicon: a dualrepresentation approachBeate Abel University of WuppertalIn two empirical studies, judgements that native speakers of German makeabout the decomposability of English idioms were investigated. Adecomposable idiom is an idiom whose individual components contribute toits figurative meaning, whereas the constituents of a nondecomposable idiomdo not make such a contribution. The findings were analysed and comparedto native judgements. The Model of Dual Idiom Representation isintroduced in order to explain the differences between the two groups. Atthe lexical level, the model postulates the parallel existence of idiom entriesand constituent entries. The degree of decomposability and the frequencywith which the idiom is encountered determine its lexical representation. Ifthere is no idiom entry for a particular idiom, conceptual representationsare accessed during comprehension. Because nonnative speakers encounteridioms less often than native speakers, the first language (L1) and secondlanguage (L2) lexicon vary with regard to the number of idiom entries.I IntroductionIdioms such as back to square one, play with fire, pull someone’s leg,steal the show or with flying colours are expressions that abound inEnglish and are easily produced and understood by speakers of thatlanguage.Traditionally, idioms are described as fixed expressions, i.e., asphrases or sentences whose figurative meaning is not clear from theliteral meaning of their individual constituents. 1 As a consequence,most authors have drawn a fundamental distinction between literaland figurative language and have assumed that idioms and their1The approach that dominated the early days of idiom research and established distinctionswas generative grammar. From a generative, i.e., syntactic point of view, the fact that anexpression is not interpretable in a literal way necessarily leads to the assumption that it isa fixed (noncompositional) expression. More pragmatically oriented studies use the terms‘true idioms’ (Wood, 1986: II) or ‘pure idioms’ (Howarth, 1998: 28) to refer to the ‘idiomatic= fixed’ relationship and allow for other nonliteral phrases to be idiomatic but nonfixed atthe same time.Address for correspondence: Beate Abel, Department of English / Linguistics (Fb A),University of Wuppertal, Gauss-Strasse 20, 42097 Wuppertal, Germany; email: abel@uniwuppertal.de© Arnold 2003 10.1191/0267658303sr226oaDownloaded from http://slr.sagepub.com at Shanghai Jiaotong University on March 7, 2009
330 English idioms in the L1 and L2 lexiconfigurative meanings must be stored separately in the mental lexicon,and that this meaning must be learnt as a whole unit. This articleargues that these assumptions only apply to a subgroup of idiomsand that it is more adequate to think of idioms as being representedin a dual way.For linguistic theories, which are mainly concerned with literallanguage, idioms have always caused serious problems. This is why,over the last four decades, linguists and psycholinguists havedeveloped a number of hypotheses to describe the specialgrammatical characteristics of idioms and to explain theirprocessing and representation. Although we have gained manyinsights from these studies, there are three aspects that have beenneglected. First, the studies deal exclusively with the native mentallexicon and do not try to integrate the second language (L2)lexicon. Secondly, the studies concentrate either on lexicalrepresentations or on conceptual aspects but do not try to combinethe two into one theoretical model. Lastly, most of the studies donot allow for frequency effects to play a role in the representationor processing of idioms.This article introduces a model that includes these aspects, theModel of Dual Idiom Representation (henceforth the DIR Model).It is a psycholinguistic model which not only combines the lexicaland the conceptual level but also integrates the representation ofidioms in the first language (L1) and the L2 lexicon. Additionally,it considers frequency effects that influence the representations.Supporting evidence for the DIR Model comes from empiricalstudies on the decomposability of idioms with native and nonnativespeakers of English. Insights and results of experimentalmorphological studies are also used to confirm the model’sassumptions.The next section briefly reviews psycholinguistic idiom research,focusing on hypotheses and models of idiom comprehension andprocessing and the so-called Idiom Decomposition Hypothesis(Gibbs and Nayak, 1989). Next, empirical studies on thedecomposability of idioms carried out with native and nonnativespeakers of English are presented and the differences between thetwo groups of speakers are compared. The main assumptions of theDIR Model suggest explanations for the findings. Finally, theconclusions summarize the central points made in this article.II Psycholinguistic idiom researchOver the last few decades, psycholinguistic idiom research has beendominated by several approaches to idiom comprehension andDownloaded from http://slr.sagepub.com at Shanghai Jiaotong University on March 7, 2009
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