This paper provides evidence that the inveterate way of assessing linguistic items’ degrees of analysability by calculating their derivation to base frequency ratios may obfuscate the difference between two meaning processing models: one based on the principle of compositionality and another on the principle of parsability. I propose to capture the difference between these models by estimating the ratio of two transitional probabilities for complex words: P (affix | base) and P (base | affix). When transitional probabilities are comparably low, each of the elements entering into combination is equally free to vary. The combination itself is judged by speakers to be semantically transparent, and its derivational element tends to be more linguistically productive. In contrast, multi-morphemic words that are characterised by greater discrepancies between transitional probabilities are similar to collocations in the sense that they also consist of a node (conditionally independent element) and a collocate (conditionally dependent element). Such linguistic expressions are also considered to be semantically complex but appear less transparent because the collocate’s meaning does not coincide with the meaning of the respective free element (even if it exists) and has to be parsed out from what is available.

As word formation can be conceptualized as an act of creativity with considerable space for differences among speakers, we present pilot research aimed at the examination of the role of Big-Five personality domains in the formation of new complex words. The sample consisted of 197 participants who underwent a word formation test and a personality assessment via The Next Big-Five Inventory. The results indicate that when ordinal regression is conducted with an aim of accounting for age and gender, open-mindedness is shown as a potentially important predictor – it positively predicted economy of expression and negatively predicted semantic transparency. Furthermore, a more nuanced approach differentiating three facets of open-mindedness shows that creative imagination predicted semantic transparency positively while esthetic sensitivity predicts semantic transparency negatively (the reverse is true for the economy of expression). These findings provide a promising starting point for future research.

The present study examined Chinese speakers’ knowledge of English polysemous phrasal verbs (PVs) and factors that may constrain the development of PVs. The intermediate and advanced learners judged the acceptability of 100 senses of 50 PVs. Results indicate that both the intermediate and the advanced learners tended to favor the high-frequency senses (51.2%∼67.2%) of PVs but disfavor the low-frequency senses (32.9%∼46.3%) of PVs. PV frequency, semantic transparency, and time spent reading books and watching films/TV could predict the advanced learners’ mastery of the high-frequency senses, while PV frequency and preemption could predict their mastery of the low-frequency senses. Semantic transparency, PV frequency, and preemption could predict the intermediate learners’ knowledge of the high-frequency senses, while semantic transparency, frequency of high-frequency senses, and preemption could predict their acceptance of the low-frequency senses. No reliable relationship was detected among the learners’ PV knowledge, entrenchment, time spent in second language immersion, listening to music, and communicating with others for the two groups.

This article reports on the role pragmatic inferencing plays in accounting for the ways in which native speakers perceive and interpret the semantic transparency of idioms. Although previous studies have suggested that semantic transparency intuitions of idioms are partly motivated by the conceptual metaphors that underlie them (Gibbs 1992; Gibbs et al.1997), findings from other studies (Keysar & Bly 1995, 1999) have raised questions concerning the arbitrariness of such intuitions. This study seeks to further address the discussion on the nature of semantic transparency by examining the role of pragmatic inferencing and encyclopedic world knowledge for understanding how native speakers interpret the relationship between the literal parts and figurative meanings of metaphorical idioms. To this end, semantic transparency ratings were elicited among fifteen native speakers of English for 222 metaphorical English idioms. Furthermore, raters provided qualitative support by justifying their ratings for a smaller subset of 30 idioms. These initial results were then triangulated by a follow-up exploratory study surveying etymological notes from a number of idiom dictionaries. The findings suggest that pragmatic inferencing via encyclopedic world knowledge plays an important role for the non-arbitrary way in which native speakers perceive the semantic transparency of idioms.

Chinese noun classifiers are an obligatory category associated with nouns. Studies have shown that achieving a full understanding and good mastery of Chinese noun classifiers is difficult for both young and adult L2 learners. This study examines the learning strategies used by 30 Swedish adults for a period of two months. Their learning results are compared to 30 bilingual children's production of Chinese noun classifiers. The adult learners exhibit a normal top–down learning fashion, in which they fail to acquire the complex semantic and cognitive meanings embedded in the classifiers. The children, on the other hand, apply cognitive strategies with a bottom–up approach. The adults’ learning of classifiers lags surprisingly far behind their general level of Chinese proficiency. This study can be used as a reference for future studies on the conceptual and cognitive aspects of Chinese language acquisition by speakers whose native languages are not classifier languages.