The research project concerns a psychological investigation into the syntactic productivity of phrasal idioms. Its goal is to experimentally demonstrate that the syntactic productivity of idioms is largely predictable from their internal semantics.
My aim i s to predict which phrasal idioms in English will be viewed as syntactically productive. The main hypothesis considered is that speakers make assumptions about the way in which parts of idioms contribute to their interpretations as a whole, which should affect their intuitions of the syntactic versatility of these figurative phrases and the processes used in comprehending idioms. The first series of experiments looks at the interpretation of phrasal idioms when syntactically and semantically altered to assess people's intuitions about the syntactic behavior of idioms. The second series of studies uses """"""""on-line"""""""" information processing techniques to examine the moment-by-moment processes used when people understand idiomatic phrases. The results of these studies should demonstrate that idioms do not form a unique class of linguistic items (e.g., as """"""""dead"""""""" metaphors), but can share many of the same compositional properties normally associated with more """"""""literal"""""""" language. Most significantly, this research should help intergrate the work on figurative language processing with more mainstream research on cognitive psychology on sentence comprehension. These studies should also provide valuable information for mental health professionals interested in the interpretation of figurative language by patients with various mental health disorders.
| Gibbs Jr, R W (1992) Categorization and metaphor understanding. Psychol Rev 99:572-7;discussion 578-81 |
| Gibbs Jr, R W; Kushner, J M; Mills 3rd, W R (1991) Authorial intentions and metaphor comprehension. J Psycholinguist Res 20:11-30 |
| Gibbs Jr, R W (1991) Semantic analyzability in children's understanding of idioms. J Speech Hear Res 34:613-20 |
| Gibbs Jr, R W; McCarrell, N S (1990) Why boys will be boys and girls will be girls: understanding colloquial tautologies. J Psycholinguist Res 19:125-45 |
| Gibbs Jr, R W; O'Brien, J E (1990) Idioms and mental imagery: the metaphorical motivation for idiomatic meaning. Cognition 36:35-68 |
| Nayak, N P; Gibbs Jr, R W (1990) Conceptual knowledge in the interpretation of idioms. J Exp Psychol Gen 119:315-30 |
| Gibbs Jr, R W (1990) Comprehending figurative referential descriptions. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 16:56-66 |
| Gibbs Jr, R W; Nayak, N P (1989) Psycholinguistic studies on the syntactic behavior of idioms. Cogn Psychol 21:100-38 |
| Gibbs Jr, R W; Mueller, R A; Cox, R W (1988) Common ground in asking and understanding questions. Lang Speech 31 ( Pt 4):321-35 |
