ABSTRACT

Two experiments examined meaning (re)activation of English idiomatic expressions by Spanish-dominant, English-dominant and balanced bilinguals. Participants listened to idiomatic expressions of the type I always _3*miss the boat_1* when it comes to jokes, and that_2* makes it nearly_4* impossible to attend comedy shows, and made lexical decisions to visually presented targets that were related literally (water), figuratively (fail) or unrelated to the critical idiomatic expression. In Experiment 1, we measured meaning activation immediately at idiom offset (probe 1*) and after an anaphoric referential description (e.g., that; probe 2*). Probe 2 was intended to further examine whether an anaphoric referential description was more likely to (re)activate its antecedent figurative interpretation that could be more pragmatically plausible than its literal representation. In Experiment 2, targets were presented at idiom onset and 300 ms after anaphor offset. Results revealed that idiom meaning (re)activation was modulated by language dominance, where English-dominant and balanced bilinguals had faster and more accurate responses than Spanish-dominant bilinguals.

摘要

两个实验检查了以西班牙语为主、以英语为主和平衡的双语者对英语习语表达的意义（重新）激活。参与者听到了我总是_3*想念船_{1 *}说到笑话的 惯用语，而_{2 *}使几乎_{4 *}不可能参加喜剧节目，并为视觉呈现的目标做出词汇决定，这些目标与字面（水）、比喻（失败）或与关键惯用表达无关。在实验 1 中，我们在习语偏移处（探针 1*）和照应参照描述（例如，那个；探针 2*）之后立即测量意义激活。探索 2 旨在进一步检查照应指称描述是否更有可能（重新）激活其先行的比喻性解释，这种解释可能比其字面表示在务实上更合理。在实验 2 中，目标出现在习语开始时和回指偏移后 300 毫秒。结果表明，习语意义（重新）激活受语言优势的调节，其中以英语为主和平衡的双语者比以西班牙语为主的双语者有更快、更准确的反应。