Abstract Proverbs (as Easy come, easy go) are a type of conventionalized multiword unit that can be used as separate, complete statements in speech or writing (Mieder 2007; Steyer 2015). The rationale of this study is to examine word class effects in online processing of proverbs. In Lückert and Boland (submitted), we reported facilitative effects associated with proverb keywords which suggests that word-level properties are active alongside properties of the level of the multiword unit. Previous research has shown that individual word classes have different effects in online language processing. Numerous studies revealed that verbs are processed more slowly (Cordier et al. 2013) and involve greater processing demands compared to nouns (Macoir et al. 2019). The results of the present study suggest that verbs rather than nouns facilitate proverb processing. A distributional analysis of word classes in proverb corpora implies a trend to prefer verbs over nouns in American English proverbs.

中文翻译：

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谚语在线处理中的词类效应：反应时间研究

摘要谚语（如Easy come，easy go）是一种常规的多词单元，可以用作语音或书写中单独的完整陈述（Mieder 2007； Steeer 2015）。这项研究的基本原理是研究谚语在线处理中的词类效应。在Lückert和Boland（已提交）中，我们报告了与谚语关键字相关的促进作用，这表明单词级别的属性与多词单元级别的属性同时起作用。先前的研究表明，单个单词类别在在线语言处理中具有不同的影响。大量研究表明，与名词相比，动词的处理速度较慢（Cordier等，2013），涉及的处理要求更高（Macoir等，2019）。本研究的结果表明动词而不是名词促进了谚语的处理。谚语语料库中单词类别的分布分析表明，在美国英语谚语中，倾向于使用动词而不是名词的趋势。