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Fatal mistake, awful mistake, or extreme mistake? Frequency effects on off-line/on-line collocational processing*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2014

SUHAD SONBUL
SUHAD SONBUL*
Affiliation:
Umm Al-Qura University University of Nottingham
*
Address for correspondence: Suhad Sonbul, P.O.Box: 10424 Makkah (zip code: 21955)Saudi Arabia[email protected]
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Abstract

This study explored whether native speakers of English and non-natives are sensitive to corpus-derived frequency of synonymous adjective-noun collocations (e.g., fatal mistake, awful mistake, and extreme mistake) and whether level of proficiency can influence this sensitivity. Both off-line (typicality rating task) and on-line (eye-movement) measures were employed. Off-line results showed that both natives and non-natives were sensitive to collocational frequency with clearer effects for non-natives as their proficiency increased. On-line, however, proficiency had no effect on sensitivity to frequency; both natives and non-natives showed early sensitivity to collocational frequency (first pass reading time). This on-line sensitivity disappeared later in processing for both groups (total reading time and fixation count). Results are discussed in light of usage-based theories of language acquisition and processing.

Keywords

collocationscorpus-derived frequencyeye-trackingusage-based models
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , July 2015 , pp. 419 - 437
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

*

I am greatly indebted to Professor Norbert Schmitt for his invaluable comments and suggestions on the research design. I would also like to thank Dr. Kathy Conklin and Dr. Walter van Heuven whose expertise in eye-tracking methodology and mixed-effects modelling were particularly useful. Any shortcomings are entirely my own responsibility.

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