The psycholinguistic reality of collocation and semantic prosody (1)
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Nick C. Ellis
Abstract
Our research investigates the psycholinguistic reality in language users of the phenomena of collocation and semantic prosody shown by corpus linguistics to be pervasive in language texts. This report concerns the earliest stages of word recognition and lexical access. It uses a lexical decision task to assess whether these processes are sensitive to particular collocations and to the generalizations of semantic prosody/association. The results demonstrate that native speakers preferentially process frequent verb-argument and booster/maximizer-adjective collocations. But the same paradigm that so readily shows sensitivity to particular collocations fails to demonstrate generalization. While memory for particular lexical associations affords fluent lexical access, there are no top-down semantic generalizations upon this level of processing. Our subsequent research shows semantic access to be the earliest cognitive locus of semantic association.
Abstract
Our research investigates the psycholinguistic reality in language users of the phenomena of collocation and semantic prosody shown by corpus linguistics to be pervasive in language texts. This report concerns the earliest stages of word recognition and lexical access. It uses a lexical decision task to assess whether these processes are sensitive to particular collocations and to the generalizations of semantic prosody/association. The results demonstrate that native speakers preferentially process frequent verb-argument and booster/maximizer-adjective collocations. But the same paradigm that so readily shows sensitivity to particular collocations fails to demonstrate generalization. While memory for particular lexical associations affords fluent lexical access, there are no top-down semantic generalizations upon this level of processing. Our subsequent research shows semantic access to be the earliest cognitive locus of semantic association.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
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Part I. Setting the scene
- Technology and phraseology 15
- Corpus-driven approaches to grammar 33
- Valency – item-specificity and idiom principle 49
- Fowler’s Modern English Usage at the interface of lexis and grammar 69
- The psycholinguistic reality of collocation and semantic prosody (1) 89
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Part II. Considering the particulars
- The lexicogrammar of present-day Indian English 117
- The semantic and grammatical overlap of as and that 137
- The historical development of the verb doubt and its various patterns of complementation 153
- The grammatical properties of recurrent phrases with body-part nouns 171
- A corpus-based investigation of cognate object constructions 189
- Revisiting the evidence for objects in English 211
- Lexico-functional categories and complex collocations 229
- Polysemy and lexical priming 247
- Local textual functions of move in newspaper story patterns 265
- Loud signatures 289
- Index 317
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
-
Part I. Setting the scene
- Technology and phraseology 15
- Corpus-driven approaches to grammar 33
- Valency – item-specificity and idiom principle 49
- Fowler’s Modern English Usage at the interface of lexis and grammar 69
- The psycholinguistic reality of collocation and semantic prosody (1) 89
-
Part II. Considering the particulars
- The lexicogrammar of present-day Indian English 117
- The semantic and grammatical overlap of as and that 137
- The historical development of the verb doubt and its various patterns of complementation 153
- The grammatical properties of recurrent phrases with body-part nouns 171
- A corpus-based investigation of cognate object constructions 189
- Revisiting the evidence for objects in English 211
- Lexico-functional categories and complex collocations 229
- Polysemy and lexical priming 247
- Local textual functions of move in newspaper story patterns 265
- Loud signatures 289
- Index 317
