Abstract:

In our daily usage of language, certain word combinations are more likely to appear than others, e.g., “drink” frequently co-occur with “coffee” but not with “soup”; “dark” frequently co-occur with
“chocolate” but not with “coffee”. These frequent lexical patterns -- which are dictated more by convention within the language than by grammatical or semantic restrictions -- are called collocations (Wolter & Yamashita, 2013). During my talk, I will present preliminary data from a dual lexical decision task (LDT) where we examine the processing advantage of collocations over unconnected word pairs in both native and nonnative speakers. I will discuss what we have
learned so far about the underlying factors, such as word frequency, collocation frequency, and first language influence, which collectively and interactively impact the processing of collocation in speakers varying in language proficiency and dominance.