Advantage in Reading Lexical Bundles is Reduced in Non-Native Speakers

  • Matteo Valsecchi Department of General Psychology, Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen, Germany
  • Viktoria Künstler The Centre for Media and Interactivity, Justus-Liebig University of Giessen, Germany
  • Sven Saage The Centre for Media and Interactivity, Justus-Liebig University of Giessen, Germany
  • Brian J. White Centre for Neuroscience Studies, Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada
  • Joybrato Mukherjee Department of English, Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen, Germany
  • Karl R. Gegenfurtner Department of General Psychology, Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen, Germany
Keywords: formulaic sequences, reading, non-native speakers, language learning

Abstract

Formulaic sequences such as idioms, collocations, and lexical bundles, which may be processed as holistic units, make up a large proportion of natural language. For language learners, however, formulaic patterns are a major barrier to achieving native like competence. The present study investigated the processing of lexical bundles by native speakers and less advanced non-native English speakers using corpus analysis for the identification of lexical bundles and eye-tracking to measure the reading times. The participants read sentences containing 4-grams and control phrases which were matched for sub-string frequency. The results for native speakers demonstrate a processing advantage for formulaic sequences over the matched control units. We do not find any processing advantage for non-native speakers which suggests that native like processing of lexical bundles comes only late in the acquisition process.
Published
2013-12-10
How to Cite
Valsecchi, M., Künstler V., Saage, S., White, B. J., Mukherjee, J., & Gegenfurtner, K. R. (2013). Advantage in Reading Lexical Bundles is Reduced in Non-Native Speakers. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 6(5). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.6.5.2
Section
Articles