Abstract
Four experiments will performed to examine how familiar idioms are interpreted. Subjects had to respond as rapidly as possible whether an idiom had the same or different meaning as a phrase which, on half of the trials, was a paraphrase of either the figurative or literal meaning of the idiom. When subjects were instructed to respond on the basis of either figurative or literal meaning, idioms were matched to their literal and figurative paraphrases equally rapidly. When subjects were instructed to respond only on the basis of literal meaning, idiom-phrase pairs that shared a figurative interpretation took longer to reject as different than idiom pairs that shared no interpretation. These results domonstrated that whenever a familiar idiom is comprehended, both its literal and figurative interpretations are made.
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This research was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health Grant RO3 MH29398 to Arnold L. Glass.
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Glass, A.L. The comprehension of idioms. J Psycholinguist Res 12, 429–442 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01067624
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01067624