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The comprehension of idioms

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JOURNAL OF MEMORY AND LANGUAGE 27,66-83 (1988)

The Comprehension df Idioms

CRISTINA CACCIARI AND PATRIZIA TABOSSI

Dipartimento di Psicologia, Universitci di Bologna
The access of idiomatic expressions was investigated in three cross-modal priming ex-
periments. When the idiomatic string was predictable, subjects were faster at performing a
lexical decision to idiomatically related targets than to literally related targets (Experiment
1). When the string was not recognizable as idiomatic until its completion, then subjects
were faster on the target literally related to the last word (Experiment 2). Lexical decision
for the same materials used in Experiment 2, when target words were presented 300 ms after
the end of idiom was heard, was faster both for targets related to the last word and for the
idiomatic meaning of the string, relative to control targets (Experiment 3). Neither the direct
access model nor the lexical representation model seems adequate to explain the present
findings. A new hypothesis concerning the representation and the processing of idioms is
presented. 63 1988 Academic Press, Inc.

Typically, an idiom is characterized as a
string of words whose semantic interpreta-
tion cannot be derived compositionally
from the interpretation of its parts. “Shoot
the breeze,” for instance, cannot be under-
stood by putting together shoot, the, and
breeze in the same way in which “eat the
soup” can be understood. Thus, idiomatic
expressions defy the standard view of lan-
guage comprehension according to which
understanding a sentence entails at least
recognizing the individual words in the sen-
tence, retrieving their meanings from the
mental lexicon, and combining them ac-
cording to their grammatical relations.
The order of authors’ names is alphabetical. The
present research was supported by Grant CT. 1131
from the Italian National Council for Research (CNR)
and by Grant 8600499 from Minister0 Pubblica Istruz-
ione. Correspondence and requests for reprints con-
cerning this article should be sent to Cristina Cacciari,
Dipartimento di Psicologia, Viale Berti-Pichat, 5,
40127 Bologna Italia. We thank Corrado Cavallero,
Eugenio Pasini, and the Istituto di Elettronica e Elet-
trotecnica, Universita di Padova without whose help
the experimental materials would have never been
made. We are also grateful to Oliviero Stock, Ino Flo-
res d’Arcais, Sam Glucksberg, Gary Dell, Mike
Tanenhaus, Curt Burgess, Bob Peterson, and Lucia
Colombo for helpful discussions. We also thank Isa-
bella Cupelli for her assistance in collecting and ana-
lyzing data and Linda Ginzel for improving the English
form.
668
0749-5%x/88 $3.00
Copyri&t 0 1988 by Academic Press, Inc.
Au rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
However, insofar as this view does not al-
low for the comprehension of idioms, these
expressions are problematic for any theory
of language processing. They are even
more challenging if one considers how fre-
quently they appear in the language. Boat-
ner, Gates, and Makkai’s (1975) Dictionary
of American Idioms, for example, includes
4000 expressions, a list which is far from
exhaustive. It is clear, therefore, that the
comprehension system cannot deal with
them simply as exceptions that must be
learned but do not affect the normal func-
tioning of the system.
Although the issue is important, and its
theoretical relevance has long been ac-
knowledged by linguists (Fraser, 1970),
psycholinguists have devoted little atten-
tion to the way in which idioms are identi-
fied and comprehended. To date, there are
two main views. According to the lexical
representation hypothesis, idioms are
stored in the mental lexicon as individual
items and are retrieved in the same way as
any other word. This retrieval process is
initiated as soon as the first word of an id-
iomatic expression is encountered and runs
in parallel with the computation of the lit-
eral meaning of the expression (Swinney &
Cutler, 1979).
An alternative view has been proposed
 COMPREHENSION
by Gibbs (1980, 1986), who claims that the
identification of an idiom does not occur in
parallel with the computation of its literal
meaning. Rather, it precedes the derivation
of the literal meaning, which is accom-
plished only if the idiomatic interpretation
of the string fails to integrate with the con-
text.
Evidence in support of either of these hy-
potheses is ambiguous. One reason is that
the hypotheses lead to similar predictions,
although Gibbs’ direct access hypothesis
does make stronger claims than the lexical
representation hypothesis. Results showing
that accessingthe meaning of an idiom from
the mental lexicon is faster than computing
its literal interpretation are compatible with
both hypotheses. On the contrary, both hy-
potheses seem to reject the possibility of
the literal interpretation being faster than
the idiomatic interpretation. However, in
the lexical representation hypothesis the
two processes are thought to start in paral-
lel. Findings showing no difference in com-
prehension times of idiomatic and literal in-
terpretation are easier to accommodate
within this framework than in Gibbs’. Here,
the idiomatic interpretation must be faster
than its literal counterpart, because it is the
only one initiated automatically upon pre-
sentation of the string. Indeed, results from
several studies are compatible with both
views, showing faster reaction times for the
figurative interpretation of an idiomatic ex-
pression than for its literal interpretation,
both in and out of context (Gibbs, 1980;
1986; Ortony, Schallert, Reynolds, & An-
tos, 1978).
Swinney and Cutler (1979) had subjects
judge whether a string of words was a
meaningful phrase. Decision times were
faster for those strings which had both an
idiomatic and a literal interpretation (e.g.,
“break the ice”) than for those that had
only a literal interpretation (e.g., “break
the cup”).
A similar pattern of results was obtained
by Gibbs (1986), whose subjects had to de-
cide the meaningfulness of a target phrase
OF IDIOMS 669
presented after a short story containing an
idiomatic expression (e.g., “he kept it un-
der his hat”). The story biased either the
idiomatic interpretation of the expression
or its literal interpretation, as illustrated in
the following example:
Idiom story.
Alice was telling her friend about her
brother Bob.
“Bob saw someone steal a diamond brace-
let in a jewelry shop.”
“Did he tell anyone?” the friend asked.
“No,” Alice replied,
“he kept it under his hat.”
Literal story.
Grace and Mary were watching a magician
perform at their school.
For one trick he held out a rabbit and made
it disappear.
Grace couldn’t figure it out.
“Where is it?” she asked.
“It’s obvious,” Mary replied,
“he kept it under his hat.”
The target phrase was either a para-
phrase of the nonliteral interpretation of the
idiom (e.g., “he didn’t tell anyone”), a
paraphrase of its literal interpretation (e.g.,
“it’s beneath its cap”), or an unrelated
phrase (e.g., “it happened to Sally”).
Gibbs found that subjects made faster deci-
sions about the nonliteral paraphrase than
about either the literal paraphrase or the
unrelated phrase, regardless of the story
which they had been presented.
One problem with these studies is that
they do not necessarily reflect the way peo-
ple process idiomatic expressions during
comprehension.
Probably the only on-line study pub-
lished so far is that by Estill and Kemper
(1982). Their subjects monitored for a tar-
get word in a sentence (e.g., WALLS),
which was the same as a word specified in
advance (word condition: e.g., WALLS),
rhymed with a prespecified word (rhyme
condition: e.g., FALLS), or belonged to a
prespecified category (category condition:
670 CACCIARI
e.g., PART OF A BUILDING) (Marslen-
Wilson & Tyler, 1980). The target word,
which was the last word of an idiom (e.g.,
“climbing the walls”), occurred in one of
four sentential contexts: a sentence con-
taining the idiom and biasing its literal in-
terpretation (e.g., “Orville was interested
in spiders and could sit for hours and watch
them climbing the walls of the garden.“); a
sentence containing the idiom and biasing
its nonliteral interpretation (e.g., “By the
fourth day in the hospital, Orville was
climbing the walls to go home.“); a sen-
tence containing the idiom and ambiguous
about its interpretation (e.g., “Orville
hated prison and was climbing the walls to
get out.“); and finally, a sentence contain-
ing a nonidiomatic expression (e.g., “Or-
ville began the renovation of his old house
by knocking out the walls.“). Estill and
Kemper (1982) found that word monitoring
was significantly slower in nonidiomatic
contexts than any of the idiomatic contexts,
which did not differ reliably from one an-
other. The authors interpreted the lack of
difference among the three sentences con-
taining the idiomatic expression as evi-
dence in support of the lexical representa-
tion hypothesis.
These studies, whether on-line or off-
line, have treated idioms as a type of ambi-
guity: “kick the bucket” is an ambiguous
expression meaning either “kick the pail”
or “die” in a fashion similar to the way in
which “bank” is ambiguous as “money”
or “river bank.” Consistent with this view,
the authors have focused their attention on
how fast people can understand the two
meanings. Likewise, the two theories differ
mainly in that they suggest different time
courses in the comprehension of each
meaning.
While many idioms can also be inter-
preted as literal sentences, this is not an
essential characteristic. None of the follow-
ing idioms, for instance, can be interpreted
literally: “by and large,” “look after,”
“lay down the law, ” “shoot the breeze,”
“build castles in the air.”
AND TABOSSI
Also, as Mueller and Gibbs (1987) have
recently pointed out, intuition suggeststhat
idiomatic expressions differ not only in how
frozen they are, i.e., the kind of operations
that they can undergo (Fraser, 1970), but in
other ways that may be relevant to how
they are processed and understood. For ex-
ample, according to definition, “feel out”
is an idiom as much as “spill the beans,”
although ordinary speakers’ intuition about
the two expressions is likely to be very dif-
ferent. Namely, the nonliteralness of the id-
iom will be easily acknowledged for the lat-
ter expression but not for the former. More-
over, even “very idiomatic” idioms differ
from one another with regard to how early
in the string they can be identified, even
without taking context into account.
Although these factors have not been
considered in current research on idiom
comprehension, they are likely to influence
the way in which people understand these
expressions. The present study is an initial
exploration of how a subclass of idiomatic
expressions is processed during sentence
comprehension. These expressions have
the following characteristics:
1. Syntactically they have the structure:
V (NP) (PP)(PP), where at least one of the
constituents in parentheses is present.
2. They are not ambiguous in that they
have no literal counterpart. According to
Ruwet (1983) they are opaque.
3. Their interpretation cannot be deter-
mined by trying to make sense of their lit-
eral meaning and must be part of the lin-
guistic knowledge of the listener.
4. The idiomatic string can be completed
literally until its last word.
This procedure specified idioms that are
probably processed in the same way. Also,
this choice has practical advantages at this
stage of research: It allows different hy-
potheses to make distinct predictions that
can be tested with an ordinary on-line tech-
nique such as the cross-modal priming par-
 COMPREHENSION
adigm (Swinney , Onifer, Prather, & Hir-
shkowitz, 1979).
Let us suppose that after listening to the
sentence
After the excellent performance, the tennis
player was in seventh heaven.
a subject makes a lexical decision to either
SAINT, semantically related to heaven, or
to HAPPY, semantically related to the
meaning of the idiom, or to the unrelated
control UMBRELLA. In the sentential
context preceding the idiomatic string, or in
the string itself before heaven, no cue is
given to suggest that an idiom is going to
occur. Intuitively, one would imagine that
in this case comprehension goes on compo-
sitionally until one recognizes heaven.
Since this word does not tit literally in the
context, the sentence will be reconsidered
and eventually reinterpreted idiomatically.
If the hypothesis that has been ascribed to
Bobrow and Bell (1973) (Gibbs, 1980; Swin-
ney & Cutler, 1979) can ever be shown to
have psychological validity, it will be in a
case as the one detailed above, where no
cues to the idiomatic interpretation are
given until the end of the string. Thus, ac-
cording to this hypothesis, one should ex-
pect responses to SAINT to be faster than
those to HAPPY or UMBRELLA.
The opposite prediction is made by Gibbs’
hypothesis, according to which the idiom-
related target HAPPY should be faster than
both SAINT and UMBRELLA.
Finally, the lexical representation hypothe-
sis predicts that both SAINT and HAPPY
should be faster than the unrelated control.
In fact, if the idiom is accessed as a lexical
item, its meaning must be available by the
end of the string, thus facilitating HAPPY.
Moreover, if the literal processing of the
expression is carried out in parallel, at least
until some cue favors the idiomatic inter-
pretation, in the present case heaven must
be recognized and accessed, thereby facili-
tating SAINT. In order to test these hy-
potheses, Experiment 1 was devised.
OF IDIOMS 671
EXPERIMENT 1
Method
Subjects. A total of 35 undergraduates
(20 women and 15 men) volunteered to par-
ticipate in an experimental session lasting
about 20 min. None of them had previously
participated in an experiment of this sort.
Material and design. Twenty familiar
idioms,’ selected according to the criteria
outlined above, were presented in a random
order to 15 subjects, who were requested to
give paraphrases of the expressions. Nine
idioms, whose meanings were correctly
paraphrased by at least 95% of the subjects,
were obtained for use in the experiment.
For each of the nine idiomatic expres-
sions, a sentence was constructed so that
the information preceding the idioms biased
neither the idiomatic nor the literal comple-
tion of the string (e.g., “After the excellent
performance, the tennis player was in sev-
enth heaven.“-“ After the excellent per-
formance, the tennis player was in seventh
position.“). Three visually presented target
words were paired with each sentence: a
word semantically associated with the
meaning of the idiom (idiom target); a word
associated with the meaning of the last
word in the string (literal target); and an
unrelated word to be used as control (con-
trol target).
The idiom targets were selected accord-
ing to the answers produced by the 15 sub-
jects mentioned above. Ten different judges
were used to select the literal targets. They
were presented with the final words of the
nine idioms in a random order and re-
quested to produce the first associates that
came to mind. A control experiment was
run to determine that the lexical decision
i Experiments 1,2, and 3 were conducted with Ital-
ian subjects and Italian materials which are listed in
the Appendix along with their corresponding English
translations. Since most of the Italian idioms have no
exact English equivalent, we have given both a word-
by-word translation and the English meaning or equiv-
alent for each idiom. The English translations were
used in the text.
672 CACCIARI
times for the nine idiom targets, the nine
literal targets, and nine arbitrarily chosen,
unrelated controls were comparable in iso-
lation. These words were included in a list
of 304 items (152 words and 152nonwords).
The list was presented in four randomized
blocks to 9 subjects, who performed a lex-
ical decision task on the items. The mean
reaction times (RTs) and standard devia-
tions (SDS) for the idiomatic target words,
the literal target words, and the control
words were the following: 519 ms (SD 34),
520 ms (SD 31), and 520 ms (SD 19). They
did not differ significantly.
In addition to the test materials, filler ma-
terials were also prepared. They consisted
of 30 “formal” and 21 “colloquial” sen-
tences. The latter, which were obtained by
using colloquial lexical items, but did not
contain idiomatic expressions, were de-
vised in order to avoid the experimental
sentences being noticed by the subjects as
strange or awkward in the list. Each of
these 51 filler sentences, which were ap-
proximately of the same length as the ex-
perimental sentences, was paired with a vi-
sual target. Fifteen formal and 15 colloquial
sentences were paired with target visual
nonwords, whereas the remainder were
paired with target visual words. Three vi-
sual filler words had a semantic association
with one word of the paired formal sen-
tence and three with one word of the paired
informal sentence.
The 60 sentences were recorded in a pre-
specified random order by a male speaker
on one channel of a tape recorder. There
was a 5-s interval between sentences. A
lOOO-Hzpulse,* inaudible to the subjects,
was placed automatically on the other
channel of the tape, precisely at the offset
of one word in each sentence. In the exper-
imental sentences, the pulse was at the end
of the last word of the idiomatic string. In
*Pulses are placed automatically by using a pro-
gram developed at the Istituto di Elettronica e Elettro-
tecnica, LJniversit6 di Padova and run on a Nova com-
puter.
AND TABOSSI
the filler sentences, the pulse occurred at
the offset of one word chosen in such a way
as to cover the entire range of positions
within sentences (i.e., beginning, middle,
and end). The pulse caused a word to be
displayed on the screen of an Apple micro-
computer for 1500 ms. It also started a dig-
ital timer which either stopped when the
subjects pressed the space bar or reset au-
tomatically after 5 s.
In order for the same idiom to be pre-
sented only once to each subject, three sets
of visual targets were constructed. In one
set the visual target paired with an experi-
mental sentence was related to the idiom-
atic meaning; in another list it was associ-
ated with the meaning of the last word in
the string and in the third list it was the
control target. The filler visual targets were
the same in the three sets. In each set, three
targets were idiomatic targets, three were
literal targets, and three were controls,
yielding a total of nine experimental tar-
gets.
One set of 60 visual words was paired
with the list of sentences and randomly as-
signed to an equal number of subjects who
acted as their own controls.
Procedure. Subjects were tested individ-
ually. They sat in a sound-attenuated room
in front of an Apple microcomputer screen
connected to a stereo tape recorder. They
were instructed to perform a lexical deci-
sion task to strings that would appear on the
screen while listening to a sentence. They
were told to press the space bar of the Ap-
ple keyboard with their dominant hand (3
subjects were left-handed) if the string was
an actual word and to do nothing otherwise.
After 10practice trials, one of the three sets
paired with the list of sentences was pre-
sented to each subject. Reaction times to
lexical decisions were recorded.
The subjects were informed that they
should pay attention to the sentences, be-
cause at the end of the experimental session
they would be asked questions about them.
In fact, immediately after the end of the
 COMPREHENSION
sequence, the subjects were given 20 sen-
tences, each printed on one card. Half of
the sentences had been presented in the ex-
periment and the remainder had not. The
latter were derived from the sentences the
subjects actually heard. Subjects who failed
to reach a score of 60% correct recognitions
were excluded from subsequent analyses.
Among the 30 subjects who reached the
threshold, the level of correct recognitions
was 75%.
Results
The mean percentage of errors was 1.5.
In order to reduce variability, data points +
2 SDS from the mean RTs of each subject
(2.97% of responses) were excluded from
the analyses.
Table 1 shows the mean RTs and SDSfor
the correct responses under the three ex-
perimental conditions. The results showed
a reliable main effect both in the analysis by
subjects (F(2,58) = 7.03, MSe 3071; p <
.005) and in the analysis by materials
(F(2,16) = 4.20, MSe 1585; p < .05). Min
F’(2,37) = 2.63 was not significant,
Planned nonorthogonal comparisions
showed that the idiom targets were re-
sponded to faster than the literal targets,
which did not differ significantly from the
control targets (Idiom vs. Literal: F(1,58)
= 7.32,~ < .Ol; Literalvs. Control: F(1,58)
= 0.8, n.s.).
Discussion
The findings of Experiment I suggest that
the interpretation of an idiomatic expres-
sion is immediately available upon its pre-
sentation. There is no evidence that access
to the meaning of the last word in the string
TABLE 1 periment 1, obtained using the lexical deci-
MEAN REACTION TIMES AND STANDARD
DEVIATIONS (ms) FOR LEXICAL DECISION TO
TARGET WORDS IN EXPERIMENT 1
Idiomatic Literal Control
599 (82) 638 (97)
651 (69)
OF IDIOMS 673
occurs. These results are compatible with
the results of Estill and Kemper (1982),
who found an advantage of the idiomatic
over the literal interpretation of an idiom-
atic string. Hence, the results seem to sup-
port Gibbs’ hypothesis that people under-
stand idioms without even trying to com-
pute their literal interpretation.
Although Gibbs’ hypothesis can account
for the present data, it does not explain the
processes during comprehension that give
rise to the idiomatic interpretation. In fact,
the materials used in Experiment 1 give no
apparent indication either in the sentential
context preceding the idiomatic string or in
the string itself prior to its last word that an
idiom has been encountered. Even assum-
ing that the retrieval of the idiomatic mean-
ing is initiated at the beginning of the string
in parallel with its literal interpretation, it is
difficult to imagine that people would sus-
pend the computation of the literal meaning
of the sentence before accessing its last
word. Thus, before this conclusion is ac-
cepted, a number of alternatives should be
considered.
First, the results of Experiment 1 are
puzzling only if they genuinely reflect the
on-line process of idiom comprehension.
Otherwise, they merely replicate a consis-
tent body of evidence obtained with post-
perceptual tasks (Gibbs, 1980, 1986). In-
deed, it has been claimed that the two tasks
most commonly used in cross-modal stud-
ies-naming and lexical decision-are both
sensitive to semantic factors, but differ in
that the former reflects only immediate,
perceptual processes, whereas the latter
can reflect postperceptual as well as per-
ceptual processes (Seidenberg, Waters,
Sanders, & Langer, 1984). Hence, it would
be easy to conclude that the results of Ex-
sion task, reflect postperceptual phenom-
ena. However, there are reasons to doubt
this explanation. Data collected in several
studies using this technique indicate that it
can reflect on-line processes (Swinney, On-
ifer, Prather, & Hirshkowitz, 1979) without
674 CACCIABI AND TABOSSI
being susceptible to backward priming ef-
fects, at least in sentential contexts. More-
over, there is evidence that in shallow lan-
guages, such as Italian and unlike English,
lexical decision is sensitive to semantic fac-
tors, whereas naming is not. Thus this evi-
dence challenges, at least for these lan-
guages, the adequacy of this task to tap lex-
ical processing and suggests the
appropriateness of the lexical decision in-
stead (Katz & Feldman, 1983). While the
advantages and disadvantages of these
tasks are still under investigation, it is rea-
sonable at least to consider that the findings
in Experiment 1 may not be an artifact of
the particular experimental paradigm.
A second possibility is that the materials
(lists of sentences and sets of visual words)
allowed the subjects to enter an “idiom
mode” of language processing (Bobrow &
Bell, 1973). They might have realized the
purpose of the experiment and developed a
strategy to detect idioms. Or, more simply,
they may have become attuned to the oc-
currence of idioms, therefore developing a
bias toward anticipating the completion of a
sentence as idiomatic. However, the pro-
portion of sentences containing idioms in
the list was only 15%, and such a propor-
tion is usually not considered sufficiently
high to draw the subject’s attention to one
type of material in an experimental list
(Tweedy & Lapinski, 1981).
A third hypothesis, which will be inves-
tigated in the next experiment, concerns
the nature of the idioms employed. They
were selected so that they could be com-
pleted equally well either literally or idiom-
atically; e.g., “to be in seventh . . .” could
be completed with position as well as with
heaven, among other words. Moreover, as
we have already stated, contexts created no
bias either way. However, it can be argued
that a string such as “to be in seventh . . .”
can call to mind its idiomatic completion,
regardless of whether other completions
are possible. A similar phenomenon can be
found in word recognition, where a frag-
ment such as “capt” is likely to call to mind
captain, even if it is going to be completed
as captive. It is possible that, despite pos-
sible alternatives, subjects had a bias to-
ward the idiomatic interpretation of some
of the expressions after the presentation of
an initial fragment of them. If this were the
case, these could be identified as idioms be-
fore enough information for the retrieval of
the last word was encountered or identi-
fied.
If this intuition is correct, one could ex-
pect that in a completion task where people
are given initial fragments of these nine id-
ioms out of context, at least some of them
could be completed idiomatically. Indeed, a
test of this sort was given to two groups of
15 subjects each. They were asked to com-
plete each string: one group at the third
word and the other at the second word from
the end (e.g., “To be in . . .” and “to be in
seventh”). The string fragments were pre-
sented in a different random order for each
subject. The results showed that the strings
were completed idiomatically in 34% of the
cases at three words from the end, and in
45% of the casesat two words from the end.
When the same percentages were com-
puted without considering one idiom,
which was recognized much less than any
of the others, the scores rose to 37.5 and
50%, respectively.
Experiment 2 was devised to examine
what meanings are available with idiomatic
strings that are not predictable in advance
of their completion. That is, the last word
must be accessed in order for the idiom to
be recognized as such. If this were the case,
facilitation for the target related to that
word should be observed.
EXPERIMENT 2
As in Experiment 1, in the test trials sub-
jects listened to a sentence containing an
idiom. At the end of the idiomatic string
they were visually presented with a target
word to which they had to perform a lexical
decision task, as illustrated in the following
example:
 COMPREHENSION
The girl decided to tell her boyfriend to go
to the devil, once and for all.
AWAY
HORNS
TROUT
The sentences biased neither the idiom-
atic nor the literal completion of the string.
The idioms had the same characteristics as
those used in Experiment 1, except that
they were pretested and selected so that
people were not likely to complete the frag-
ments preceding the last word of these ex-
pressions idiomatically.
Method
Subjects. A total of 33 undergraduates
(23 women and 10 men) volunteered for the
experiment, which lasted about 25 min.
They had not previously participated in an
experiment of this sort.
Materials and design. A group of 40 fa-
miliar idioms, different from those used in
Experiment 1, was selected. To ensure that
the initial parts of these expressions did not
call to mind the idioms, the selected strings
were placed in sentences as informatively
poor as possible (e.g., “He told him to go to
the devil.“). These sentences were mixed
with 175 filler sentences (e.g., “The man
was leaning on the door.“). Five lists were
then created, each of which contained sen-
tence fragments in a random order. The
length of the fragments varied in the five
lists, so that in List 1 the fragments were
the shortest (e.g., “He told . . .“) and in
List 5 they were the longest (e.g., “He told
him to go to the . . .“). In general, the
shortest fragments included only the verb
of the idiomatic expressions, whereas the
longest fragment included all but their last
word. Each list was given to 15 subjects,
who were instructed to make a sentence out
of the fragments. This procedure allowed
us to select 12 expressions that were not
completed idiomatically by more than 5%
of the subjects and were therefore suitable
for the purpose of Experiment 2.
OF IDIOMS 675
Three words were paired with each of 12
idioms for use as visual targets. One word,
obtained by selecting the most frequent ex-
pression used by 15 judges to paraphrase
each string, was related to its meaning (id-
iomatic target); one word, obtained by ask-
ing a new panel of subjects simple word
associations, was related to the meaning of
the last word in each string (literal target),
and the third word was an unrelated control
(control target).
In order to ensure that lexical decisions
to the selected targets did not differ signif-
icantly in isolation, a pretest similar to the
one described in Experiment 1 was per-
formed with 20 subjects. The mean RTs and
SDS for the idiomatic target words, the lit-
eral target words, and the control target
words were 537 ms (SD 20), 535 ms (SD
21), and 538 ms (SD 18), respectively.
In addition to the experimental materials,
filler materials were constructed. They con-
sisted of 12 informal sentences and 48 for-
mal sentences, approximately the same
length as the experimental sentences. Half
of these (6 informal and 24 formal) were
paired with visual target words, whereas
the remainder were paired with legal non-
words. Six of the visual target words paired
with formal sentences were associated with
one of the words in the preceding context,
whereas the remaining 24 filler targets were
unrelated.
The 72 sentences (12 experimental and 60
filler) were recorded on one channel of a
tape recorder by a male speaker in a pre-
specified random order. There was a 5-s in-
terval between sentences. On the second
channel of the tape recorder an inaudible
pulse of 1000 Hz was placed at the offset of
one word in each sentence. In the case of
the experimental sentences, the pulse oc-
curred at the end of the last word in the
idiomatic strings, whereas in the case of the
filler sentences it was placed in such a way
as to cover the entire range of positions in
the sentences. The pulse caused a visual
word to be displayed on the screen of the
676 CACCIARI AND TABOSSI

same microcomputer used in the previous (F(2,22) = 3.56, MSe 2882; p < .05). Min
experiment for 1500 ms and started the F’(2,47) = 2.31 was not significant.
timer as in Experiment 1. Planned nonorthogonal comparisons
Three sets of 72 visual targets to be showed that the responses to literal target
paired with the list of sentences were also words were faster than those to idiomatic
prepared. The fdler words and nonwords target words, which responses were not re-
were the same in the three sets. While in liably faster than those to the control tar-
one set the visual target paired with an ex- gets (Literal vs. Idiomatic: F(1,52) = 5.17,
perimental sentence was the idiomatic one, p < .05; Idiomatic vs. Control: F(1,52) =
in another set it was the literal one, and in 0.9, n.s.).
the third set it was the unrelated control. In The present results are clearly different
each set, there was a total of 12 experimen- from those of Experiment 1. When there is
tal visual targets: 4 were idiomatic, 4 were no bias either in the sentence or in the idi-
literal, and 4 were controls. omatic string to suggest to a listener that
Each set, paired with the list of sen- (s)he is being presented with an idiom, the
tences, was randomly assigned to an equal figurative interpretation is not automati-
number of subjects, who acted as their own cally activated, even at the end of the
controls. string. Thus, these data are counter to both
Procedure. The procedure was the same the direct accesstheory and the lexical rep-
as that in Experiment 1. The only differ- resentation theory. The data support the
ence was that halfway through the experi- view that, at least with idioms of this type
mental session there was a brief rest inter- and without contextual cues, idiomatic
val. Six subjects failed to reach the thresh- strings are initially processed only literally.
old in the recognition test and were not Obviously, if this conclusion is correct, one
considered in the subsequent analyses. could expect that sometime after the last
Among the 27 subjects who reached the word in the string-i.e., after the word has
threshold, the mean level of correct recog- been retrieved and has failed to be inte-
nitions was 74.9%. grated in the preceding context-its idiom-
atic interpretation, which has not been ob-
Results and Discussion served at the exact end of the idiom, should
The mean percentage of errors was 2.5. be detected. In order to test this prediction,
In order to reduce variability, data points -+ Experiment 3 was designed.
2 SDS from the mean RTs of each subject
(3.09% of responses) were excluded from EXPERIMENT 3
analyses. Table 2 shows the mean RTs and
SDS of the correct responses under the Experiment 3 was identical to Experi-
three experimental conditions. The main ment 2, except that visual target words
factor was significant both in the analysis were presented to subjects 300 ms after the
by subjects (F(232) = 6.60, MSe 2540; p < last word of the idiom. This delay has been
.Ol) and in the analysis by materials shown to be long enough to allow people to
perform postperceptual, integrative tasks
TABLE 2 such as resolving lexical ambiguity (Seiden-
MEAN REACTION TIMES AND STANDARD berg, Tanenhaus, Leiman, dz Bienkowsky,
DEVIATIONS (ms) FOR LEXICAL DECISION TO 1982) or interpreting unambiguous words
TARGET WORDS IN EXPERIMENT 2 (Whitney, McKay, Kellas, & Emerson,
Idiomatic Literal Control 1985). It is therefore reasonable to assume
that after a delay the responses to idiomatic
676 (97) 644 (72) 694 (95)
targets, which in Experiment 2 failed to be
 COMPREHENSION
facilitated, should be faster than those to
their controls.
Subjects. A total of 34 undergraduates
(26 women and 8 men) volunteered for the
experiment, which lasted about 25 min.
Four subjects failed to meet the require-
ments of the recognition test (see above),
and their data were not analyzed.
Materials and design. The materials and
design were the same as those used in Ex-
periment 2, except that the lOOO-Hzpulse
placed on the second channel of the tape
recorder that was delayed by 300 ms.
Procedure. The procedure was the same
as that in Experiments 1 and 2. Among the
subjects who reached the threshold in the
recognition test, the mean percentage of
correct responses was 73.09.
Results and Discussion
The mean percentage of errors was 2.4.
In order to reduce variability, data points +
2 SD from the mean RTs of each subject
(3.05% of responses) were excluded from
analyses. The mean RTs and SDSof correct
responses under the three experimental
conditions are reported in Table 3.
There was a significant main effect both
in the analysis by subjects (F(2,58) = 6.09,
MSe 2333; p < .Ol) and in the analysis by
materials (F(2,22) = 3.73, MSe 2212; p <
.05). Min F’(2,50) = 2.31 was not signiti-
cant. Planned nonorthogonal comparisons
showed that responses to both idiomatic
and literal targets, which did not differ from
each other, were faster than those to the
controls (Idiomatic vs. Literal: F(1,58) =
0.58, ns.; Idiomatic vs. Control: F(1,58) =
6.18, p < .02; Literal vs. Control: F(l,58) =
11.89; p < .005).
TABLE 3 sion is often thought to be sensitive. More-
MEAN REACTION TIMES AND STANDARD
DEVIATIONS (ms) FOR LEXICAL DECISION TO
TARGET WORDS IN EXPERIMENT 3
Idiomatic Literal Control
630 (86) 618 (105) 661 (119)
OF IDIOMS 677
The present findings suggest that when
no cues are provided by the context and
there is no bias toward the idiomatic com-
pletion of a string, some time is required
before the meaning of the idiomatic expres-
sion can be activated. Indeed, this activa-
tion was observed 300 ms after the end of
the idiom. It is noteworthy, however, that
the visual word related to the meaning of
the last word in the string is still activated.
Evidently, contrary to Gibbs, not only is
there a time at which the comprehension of
an idiomatic interpretation is carried out,
but interpreting the expression idiomati-
cally is a rather slow process. In fact, the
literal meaning of one of its elements is still
active at 300 ms, i.e., at least 100 ms longer
than the time usually required to resolve
lexical ambiguity (Seidenberg et al., 1982).
GENERAL DISCUSSION
With predictable idioms, only the idiom-
atic meaning was activated by the time the
last word of an idiomatic string was en-
countered (Experiment 1). With nonpre-
dictable idioms, only the literal meaning of
that last word was available (Experiment 2)
until some time later (Experiment 3) when
both idiomatic and literal meanings were
activated. These findings are inconsistent
with either the lexical representation or the
direct access models of idiom comprehen-
sion.
These findings rule out the possibility
that the results could be due to the experi-
mental task-lexical decision- and do not
reflect how idioms are processed by people
during language comprehension. In fact,
the data observed in Experiment 2 are very
difficult to account for on the basis of post-
perceptual strategies to which lexical deci-
over, the different pattern of results ob-
tained using the same paradigm and either
identical or comparable materials suggests
that the task is indeed sensitive to the var-
ious experimental conditions.
If these findings reflect the way in which
678 CACCIARI AND
people understand idioms-at least the
class of idioms considered here-they do
not support current models. In particular,
Experiment 2 failed to show initial activa-
tion of the idiomatic meaning of the string,
and Experiment 3 showed late activation of
both idiomatic meaning and of the literal
meaning of its last word. According to the
direct access hypothesis, the idiomatic in-
terpretation should always be faster than
the literal interpretation. According to the
lexical representation hypothesis, the idi-
omatic interpretation of the string that runs
parallel to the literal interpretation could be
available at the end of the string since no
structural analysis but only its retrieval
from the mental lexicon is required. Nei-
ther is there any plausible explanation for
the presence of the literal interpretation of
the last word of the string 300 ms after the
end of the idiom. Thus, our results support
neither the direct access theory nor the lex-
ical representation theory.
Most of the available empirical evidence
did not discriminate between these two hy-
potheses. However, earlier research has
ruled out the view that people perform a
literal analysis of an idiomatic string before
they initiate a nonliteral interpretation. One
point established by the present study is
that such evidence does not reflect the on-
line process of comprehension; rather it re-
flects the outcome of that process. Hence,
it can hardly clarify how people come to
understand idioms while understanding a
sentence. On balance, the somewhat com-
monsense hypothesis that the literal inter-
pretation of a string is attempted first and
the idiomatic meaning activated when this
fails seems too simplistic given the results
of Experiment 1.
An alternative hypothesis is that idioms
are not encoded as separate entries in the
mental lexicon. Rather, their meaning is as-
sociated with particular configurations of
words and becomes available-in lexical
processing terms, is accessed-whenever
sufBcient input has rendered the conflgura-
TABOSSI
tion recognizable. The individual words
that participate in the configuration are the
same lexical items that are accessed ordi-
narily during comprehension. But, in addi-
tion, they take part in all the configurations
representing idiomatic meanings. Take, for
instance, is a lexical entry which is acti-
vated in order to understand a sentence like
“The boy took the book”; but it is also part
of configurations such as “take the bull by
the horns, ” “take to heart.”
One can hypothesize, analogous to what
happens in word recognition (Marslen-
Wilson, 1987), that a configuration, i.e., an
idiom, cannot be recognized before a cer-
tain amount of information has been re-
ceived. But how can this amount be speci-
tied?
At least those idioms that are verbal
phrases seem to be semantically structured
such that some parts in the idiomatic string
are more relevant than others for detecting
the idiom (Cacciari & Stock, 1987). Let us
suppose as a working assumption that ev-
ery VP idiom has such a part, which we will
refer to as the key of the string, and that the
string cannot be recognized until its key has
been accessed from the mental lexicon.
Whether the recognition of the idiom oc-
curs immediately after the key has been de-
tected can depend upon a number of fac-
tors: whether the key occurs early or late in
the string and whether the string occurs in a
context that biases the figurative interpre-
tation of the string. We do not necessarily
imply that the key is fixed through all pos-
sible contexts. We simply assume that in
the absence of a context which could antic-
ipate the recognition of an idiom (much like
a context can anticipate the identification of
a word) the recognition of the idiomatic
configuration cannot take place until after
the key has been accessed. According to
this hypothesis, a configuration is made up
of the same lexical items that need to be
activated during the comprehension of lit-
eral discourse. So one claim of the present
view is that there is only one processing of
 COMPREHENSION
an idiomatic string. This is literal until,
sometime after the activation of its key, the
configuration emerges. At this point, any
remaining lexical items in the string may
not be literally processed.
A crucial issue is the specification of the
recognition point of an idiom, i.e., the iden-
tification of its key. Unfortunately, no log-
ical criterion such as the uniqueness point
recently proposed for word identification
(Marslen-Wilson, 1987) seems to apply to
idioms. However, one way of establishing
this point is to ask independent judges to
complete ever increasing idiomatic frag-
ments in a sort of gating task (Grosjean,
1980).
Though admittedly sketchy, this model
could account for the present results. When
the key is the last word in a string, as in
Experiment 2, this word must be accessed
before the idiomatic configuration can be-
come detectable. In fact, we found a facil-
itation effect only for the literal target re-
lated to the last word. Only after this point
can the idiom be identified, as suggestedby
Experiment 3. However, when the key oc-
curs earlier in the string (Experiment l), the
last word may not even be accessed, al-
though some information from it such as its
initial phonemes is probably extracted to
allow the identification of the idiom.
In addition to accounting for our data,
this model has a number of interesting fea-
tures. First, each word is represented in the
lexicon only in one form and need not be
marked as literal or idiomatic. Particularly
with words such as be, take, set, in, and
out, this seems to be a characteristic distin-
guishing this approach from previous
views.
Second, even though we have treated
only verbal idioms, the present approach
seems to be potentially more general than
prior models. It provides a general treat-
ment for idioms both with and without a
literal interpretation. Both kinds are taken
to be represented and processed in the
same way. For those expressions which do
have both interpretations, this view pre-
OF IDIOMS 679
dicts that the interpretation that will be
available first depends upon how early the
idiomatic configuration becomes available.
If the identification point of an idiom occurs
early in the string, by the end of the string
only the figurative interpretation should be
available. If the identification does not oc-
cur until the end of the string, then the lit-
eral interpretation should be observed be-
fore the nonliteral one emerges.
Third, one problem related to the view
that idioms are mentally represented as
morphologically complex lexical items is
the fact that they can undergo syntactic
processing (Peterson, Burgess, Dell, &
Eberhard, 1987). In our approach, idioms
are processed like any other string and a
configuration can be activated regardless of
which part occurs first. Hence the present
view also accounts for the syntactic parsing
of idioms.
Within the present framework, the fact
that some or all of the lexical items in an
idiom are activated and its key is always
activated, easily allows for aspects of the
meaning of those items being available
while understanding the idiom.
Needless to say, this view has a number
of problems. One of the greatest is related
to the notion of a key of an idiom. So far,
we have used this notion as if (a) it were a
single content word and (b) there were only
one in each idiomatic string. While both as-
sumptions were made for the sake of sim-
plicity (and indeed they held in Experi-
ments 2 and 3) they need not be true in
general On many occasions an idiom be-
comes identifiable after a preposition, an
article, or the lack of or the unusual occur-
rence of one such lexical item. Moreover,
there are idioms for which it is difficult to
establish which word plays the role of the
key, the intuition being that what is crucial
is the cooccurrence of those words (e.g.,
“kick the bucket”). In other cases there
seemsto be more than one such word, as in
“take the bull. . . .” Obviously, if the no-
tion of a key is going to be of any use in the
comprehension of idioms, a much fuller
680 CACCIARI
specification of it than the crude character-
ization provided here is necessary.
A further issue that requires more de-
tailed attention is the notion of configura-
tion. Clearly, in our framework, there is a
distributed representation of the idioms in
the mental lexicon (Hinton, McClelland, &
Rumelhart, 1986). We assume, as was men-
tioned before, that activation of the config-
uration can be initiated from any of its ele-
ments. This has the clear advantage of eas-
ily accounting for the syntactic flexibility of
many idioms. However, what is not clear is
how our model can account for the fact that
listeners know the syntactic transforma-
tions of familiar idioms. Whereas some
nonpermissible transformations do not pre-
vent the listeners from detecting the idiom,
some do, as in “the bucket was kicked by
John,” where the passive form appears
more suggestive of a literal interpretation.
Finally, this study has not taken into ac-
count how context affects the recognition
of an idiom. The well-known role of context
in literal language comprehension is proba-
bly more crucial with idioms. In fact, what
is peculiar about these expressions is that if
taken literally they sometimes make no
sense but, nevertheless, they do fit in an
appropriate context. It is very likely there-
fore that the detection of this incongruency
can play a role in the identification of an
idiomatic expression (R. R. Peterson, per-
sonal communication).
In conclusion, although the hypothesis il-
lustrated above is incomplete and tentative,
it accounts for data that would be very dif-
ficult to explain within the standard mod-
els. Furthermore, it possessesa number of
interesting features that make future re-
search worthwhile. The present study sug-
gests that experimental results which seem
to show that the idiomatic interpretation of
a string is easier or as easy to accessas its
literal interpretation are largely due to the
inadequacy of the experimental paradigms
used. When a technique more likely to tap
on-line processing is used, a pattern of re-
sults emerges that suggests differences in
AND TABOSSI
the way in which idioms can be recognized
depending upon how early in the string they
become identifiable. That this factor should
be relevant is hardly surprising if one con-
siders what is being done in the related field
of word recognition. However, no attention
has been given to this important aspect by
current psychological research on idioms.
The importance of the experimental para-
digm used is clearly shown by the present
findings.
APPENDIX
Listed below are the test sentences and targets (id-
iomatic, literal, and control) for Experiments 1 and 2 in
Italian, translated word-by-word into English and with
the meaning or the corresponding English form of the
Italian idiom. In most cases, there is no English equiv-
alent, so in order to respect the form of the idiomatic
expression in Italian-in the original version-the
translation into English is necessarily stilted. The En-
glish version was used in the text.
Experiment 1
1. I1 ragazzo pensava the sue fratello fosse nato con
la camicia.
-FORTUNATO
-CRAVATTA
SORGENTE
The young man thought that his brother was born
with the shirt. (was born with a silver spoon in his
mouth)
-LUCKY
-TIE
-SPRING
2. Il commesso inform6 il collega the il principale
era andato all’altro mondo.
-MORTO
-UNIVERSO
-0ROLOGIO.
The clerk informed the colleague that the boss had
gone to another world. (had died)
-DEAD
-UNIVERSE
-WATCH
3. 11 malato di mente era convinto the i medici gli
avrebbero fatto la pelle.
-UCCISO
SUDORE
-NEGOZIO
 COMPREHENSION OF IDIOMS 681

The mentally ill person was convinced that the doc- The actor asked the producer to put in a good word
tors would have done him the skin. (would have killed for him with the director.
him) -FAVOR
-KILLED -LANGUAGE
-SWEAT -GLOVE
-SHOP
9. 11bambino protestava perch6 non voleva andare
4. La moglie rimprover il mar&o di aver fatto un a letto con le galline.
buco nell’acqua.
-PRESTO
-FALLITO -0CHE
-FONTE -SAPONE
-PARRUCCA
The child protested because he didn’t want to go to
The wife reproached her husband for having made a bed with the hens. (early)
hole in the water. (for having been unsuccessful)
-EARLY
-FAILED -GOOSE
-FOUNTAIN -SOAP.
-WIG
5. Dopo l’ottima prestazione, il tennista era al set-
timo cielo. Experiment 2
-FELICE
STELLE 1. Appena saputi i risultati il candidato liberale ac-
-RISPETTO cus6 il colpo, inaspettato, della perdita delle elezioni.
After the excellent performance, the tennis player
SCONFITTO
was at the seventh sky. (in seventh heaven) -FUCILE
-HAPPY -BUCO
-STARS
As soon as the candidate knew the results, he ac-
-RESPECT
cused the stroke (he resigned himself to the) unex-
6. I1 giovane disse alla tidanzata the non vedeva piu pected of the loss of the election.
in la del suo naso.
-DEFEATED
-0TTus0 -RIFLE
-0RECCHIE -HOLE
-MARE
2. 11regista telefon6 al produttore per chiedergli di
The young man told his girlfriend that she couldn’t venire a cape, repidamente, de1 problema.
see beyond the end of her nose.
-ESITO
-STUPID -cOLLO
-EARS -PENNE
-SEA
The director called up the producer asking him to
7. 11 direttore si lagn6 con la segretaria the aveva come to the head (to decide about) quickly of the
fatto un lavoro coi piedi. problem.
-MALE -RESOLUTION
SCARPE -NECK
-0RTO -FEATHERS
The manager complained to the secretary who did a 3. A causa di diverse diBicolta, era andato a monte
job with the feet. (badly) definitivamente l’intero progetto.
-BADLY -FALLITO
-SHOES -VETTA
-GARDEN -CHIOMA
8. L’attore chiese al produttore di aiutarlo co1 Because of several troubles, the whole project def-
regista mettendo una buona parola. initely has gone to the mountain. (has failed)
-FAVORE -UNSUCCESSFUL
-LINGUAGGIO -PEAK
-GUANTO -MANE
682 CACCIARI AND TABOSSI

4. Quando fu letto il testamento, gh eredi si accor- -HORNS

sero the era stat0 dato fondo, ormai, a tutto il patri- -TROUT
monio. 9. Per l’ennesima volta, il ragazzo cadde in piedi.
-FINITO
-SALVO
-BO’ITIGLIA
SCARPE
-BRODO -CASTAGNA
When the testament was read, the heirs realized that
Once again, the boy landed on his feet.
all the assets had been given bottom. (depleted)
SAVE
-FINISHED -SHOES
-BOTTLE
-CHESTNUT
-BROTH
10. La maestra si accorse the hhnno stava s&e
5. Durante uno dei sohti htigi, la donna accus6 il
sue.
marito di fare lo struzzo.
-TIMID0
-FUGA -PROPRIETA
-uovo -LINEA
-0ROLOGIO
The teacher realized that the pupil stayed on his
During one of the usual quarrels, the woman ac-
own. (the pupil kept to himself)
cused her husband of making the ostrich. (to play os-
trich) -SHY
-PROPERTY
-ESCAPE -LINE
-EGG
-WATCH 11. Tutti sapevano the l’uomo si era fatto in quat-
tro, pur di fare studiare il figho.
6. La Signora non mar@ la torta perch6 aveva la
luna. -AIUTO
-NUMERO
-NERVOSO -0RECCHIE
--CIELO
-VESTITO Everybody knows that the man made himself in four
(the man did everything he could) to have his son
The woman didn’t eat the cake because she had the study.
moon. (she was in a bad mood)
-HELP
-NERVOUS -NUMBER
-SKY -EARS
-DRESS
12. I parenti gli dissero the la moglie era restata di
7. L’impiegato non and6 via soltanto perch6 era al sale dopo la brutta notizia.
Verde.
-MALE
-DENARO -MARE
-ERBA -FONTE
-BOlTA
His relatives told him that his wife was left of salt
The clerk didn’t go on holiday only because he was (his wife was struck dumb) after the horrible news.
at the green. (was broke)
-BAD
-MONEY -SEA
-GRAss SPRING.
-BLOW
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