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Neuropsychology of Communication pp 131–144Cite as

Anticipatory Mechanisms in Idiom Comprehension: Psycholinguistic and Electrophysiological Evidence

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Abstract

Idiomatic expressions are highly pervasive in everyday language: as Jackendoff [1] pointed out, in American English there are as many words as there are multi-word expressions (i.e., word strings listed in semantic memory, as proverbs, clichés, idioms, phrasal verbs, etc.), roughly around 80 000 [2]. If, indeed, multi-word expressions are so pervasive in everyday language, no theory of language can ignore them. In fact, during the last few decades a consistent body of research on the comprehension and production of idioms has accumulated in psycholinguistics [3–5] and, more recently, in the cognitive neurosciences (e.g., [6], Mado Proverbio, this volume).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy

    Paolo Canal & Cristina Cacciari

  2. Department of Cognitive and Education Sciences, University of Trento, Rovereto (TN), Italy

    Francesco Vespignani

  3. Basque Center on Cognition Brain and Language, Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain

    Nicola Molinaro

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  1. Paolo Canal
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  2. Francesco Vespignani
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  3. Nicola Molinaro
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  4. Cristina Cacciari
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Catholic University of Milan, Milan, Italy

    Michela Balconi

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Canal, P., Vespignani, F., Molinaro, N., Cacciari, C. (2010). Anticipatory Mechanisms in Idiom Comprehension: Psycholinguistic and Electrophysiological Evidence. In: Balconi, M. (eds) Neuropsychology of Communication. Springer, Milano. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-1584-5_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-1584-5_7

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Milano

  • Print ISBN: 978-88-470-1583-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-88-470-1584-5

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