A comparison of factors affecting Estonian EFL learners’ idiom comprehension

Rita Anita Forssten

Abstract


The article discusses a study examining the facilitating effect that analysability (i.e. the degree of transparency) and similarity between English and Estonian equivalents have on Estonian EFL learners’ idiom comprehension. A group of (pre)adolescent L1 Estonian learners of English performed an idiom comprehension test, which consisted of idioms categorised into five groups on the basis of the degree of transparency (i.e. the degree to which their idiomatic meaning is inferable from the literal meanings of their constituents or from their figurativeness) and the degree of similarity to their Estonian equivalents. The results revealed that both transparency (in the form of a constituent to be taken literally) and identical L1 idioms facilitate EFL idiom comprehension nearly to the same degree, while the effect of semi-transparency (that is, figurativeness) seems to be clearly lower. However, opaque idioms with partially similar L1 equivalents appear to be even somewhat more difficult than opaque idioms without any L1–L2 similarity. 

***

Inglise keele kui võõrkeele idioomide mõistmist hõlbustavatest teguritest

Artikkel analüüsib uurimust, mis võrdles kahte inglise keele kui võõrkeele idioomidest arusaamist hõlbustavat tegurit: esiteks sõnasõnalistel elementidel ja figuratiivsusel põhineva analüüsitavuse mõju ja teiseks inglise idioomidega sarnaste ja identsete eesti keele kui emakeele idioomide mõju. Rühm Eesti põhikooli kuuenda klassi õpilasi sooritas idioomidest arusaamise testi, milles idioomid olid liigitatud viide erinevasse kategooriasse: 1) läbipaistmatud idioomid, millel on identne eestikeelne vaste; 2) läbipaistmatud idioomid, millel on osaliselt sarnane eestikeelne vaste; 3) läbipaistmatud idioomid, millel pole eestikeelset vastet (või on see täiesti erineva sõnastusega); 4) läbipaistvad idioomid (milles on vähemalt üks sõnasõnaliselt võetav element) ilma eestikeelse vasteta ning 5) poolläbipaistvad idioomid (ilma sõnasõnalise elemendita, aga kergesti arusaadava kujundlikkusega) ilma eestikeelse vasteta. Ilmnes, et läbipaistvus ja identne eestikeelne vaste hõlbustavad arusaamist peaaegu samal määral. Samas näib poolläbipaistvuse (figuratiivsuse) hõlbustav mõju olevat selgelt madalam ja idioomid, millel on ainult osaliselt sarnane vaste eesti keeles, osutusid kõige keerulisemateks. Vastupidi identse vaste olemasolule, mõjub osaliselt sarnane eestikeelne vaste pigem segadust tekitavalt kui toetavalt ingliskeelsest idioomist arusaamisele.


Keywords


language learning and teaching; non-native language acquisition; idiom comprehension; language transfer; Estonian; English

Full Text:

PDF

References


Abdullah, Khaled; Jackson, Howard 1998. Idioms and the language learner: Contrasting English and Syrian Arabic. – Languages in Contrast, 1 (1), 83–107. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/lic.1.1.06abd

Abel, Beate 2003. English idioms in the first language and second language lexicon: A dual representation approach. – Second Language Research, 19 (4), 329–358. https://doi.org/10.1191/0267658303sr226oa

Arnaud, Pierre J. L.; Savignon, Sandra J. 1997. Rare words, complex lexical units and the advanced learner. – James Coady, Thomas Huckin (Eds.), Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 157–173. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139524643.012

Beck, Sara D.; Weber, Andrea 2016. Bilingual and monolingual idiom processing is cut from the same cloth: The role of the L1 in literal and figurative meaning activation. – Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1350. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01350

Bobrow, Samuel A.; Bell, Susan M. 1973. On catching on to idiomatic expressions. – Memory and Cognition, 1 (3), 343–346. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03198118

Cacciari, Cristina 2014. The place of idioms in literal and metaphorical world. – Cristina Cacciari, Patrizia Tabossi (Eds.), Idioms: Processing, Structure, and Interpretation. New York: Psychology Press, 27–55.

Cacciari, Cristina; Levorato, Maria Chiari 1998. The effect of semantic analyzability of idioms in metalinguistic tasks. – Metaphor and Symbol, 13 (3), 159–177. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327868ms1303_1

Caillies, Stéphanie; Butcher, Kirsten 2007. Processing of idiomatic expressions: Evidence for a new hybrid view. – Metaphor and Symbol, 22 (1), 79–108. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926480709336754

Carrol, Gareth; Conklin, Kathy 2015. Cross language lexical priming extends to formulaic units: Evidence from eye-tracking suggests that this idea “has legs”. – Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 20 (2), 299–317. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728915000103

Cieślicka, Anna 2006. Literal salience in online-processing of idiomatic expressions by second language learners. – Second Language Research, 22 (2), 115–144. https://doi.org/10.1191/0267658306sr263oa

Cooper, Thomas C. 1999. Processing of idioms by L2 learners of English. – TESOL Quarterly, 33 (2), 233–262. https://doi.org/10.2307/3587719

Cutting, J. Cooper; Bock, Kathryn 1997. That’s the way the cookie bounces: Syntactic and semantic components of experimentally elicited idiom blends. – Memory and Cognition, 25 (1), 57–71. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197285

Gibbs, Jr., Raymond W. 1986. Skating on thin ice: literal meaning and understanding idioms in conversation. – Discourse Processes, 9 (1), 17–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/01638538609544629

Gibbs, Raymond W. Jr. 1987. Linguistic factors in children’s understanding of idioms. – Journal of Child Language, 14 (3), 569–586. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000900010291

Gibbs, Raymond W. Jr. 1991. Semantic analyzability in children’s understanding of idioms. – Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 34 (3), 613–620. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/jshr.3403.613

Gibbs, Raymond W. Jr. 1995. Idiomaticity and human cognition. – Martin Everaert, Erik-Jan van der Linden, André Schenk, Rob Schreuder (Eds.), Idioms: Structural and Psychological Perspectives. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 97–116.

Gibbs, Raymond W. Jr. 2014. Why idioms are not dead metaphors? Cristina Cacciari; Patrizia Tabossi (Eds.), Idioms: Processing, Structure, and Interpretation. New York: Psychology Press, 57–78.

Hanko, Urve; Liiv, Gustav 1998. English-Estonian Dictionary of Idioms. Tallinn: Valgus.

Irujo, Suzanne 1986. Don’t put your leg in your mouth: Transfer in the acquisition of idioms in a second language. – Tesol Quarterly, 20 (2), 287–304. https://doi.org/10.2307/3586545

Kecskés, Istvan 2000. A cognitive-pragmatic approach to situation-bound utterances. – Journal of Pragmatics, 32 (5), 605–625. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(99)00063-6

Kellerman, Eric 1977. Towards characterization of the strategy of transfer in second language learning. – Interlanguage Studies Bulletin, 2 (1), 58–145. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43135159

Levorato, M. Chiara; Cacciari, Cristina 1999. Idiom comprehension in children: Are the effects of semantic analysability and context separable? – The European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 11 (1), 51–66. https://doi.org/10.1080/713752299

Libben, Maya R.; Titone, Debra A. 2008. The multidetermined nature of idiom processing. – Memory & Cognition, 36 (6), 1103–1121. https://doi.org/10.3758/MC.36.6.1103

Liontas, John I. 2002. Context and idiom understanding in second languages. – Susan H. Foster-Cohen, Tanja Ruthenberg, Marie Louise Poschen (Eds.), EUROSLA Yearbook, 2, 155–185. https://doi.org/10.1075/eurosla.2.11lio

Liu, Dilin 2008. Idioms: Description, Comprehension, Acquisition, and Pedagogy. New York: Routledge.

Nenonen, M.; Niemi, J.; Laine, M. 2002. Representation and processing of idioms: Evidence of aphasia. – Journal of Neurolinguistics, 15, 43–58. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0911-6044(01)00005-7

Nippold, Marilyn A.; Rudzinski, Mishelle 1993. Familiarity and transparency in idiom explanation: A developmental study of children and adolescents. – Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 36 (4), 728–737. https://doi.org/10.1044/jshr.3604.728

Nordmann, Emily; Cleland, Alexandra A.; Bull, Rebecca 2014. Familiarity breeds dissent: Reliability analyses for British-English idioms on measures of familiarity, meaning, literality, and decomposability. – Acta Psychologica, 149, 87–95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2014.03.009

Nunberg, Geoffrey; Sag, Ivan A.; Wasow, Thomas 1994. Idioms. – Stephen Evenson (Ed.), Language: Companions to Ancient Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 491–538.

Saar, Maria 2014. Idioomide tõlkimise kognitiivsed eripärad: Tõlkimisprotsessi uurimus hispaania–eesti suunal. [‘The cognitive aspects of idiom translation: A process study of Spanish into Estonian translation’]. Master’s thesis. Tallinn: Tallinna Ülikool. https://www.e-varamu.ee/item/PE5RAGQPU3TIW2P6LGDBS4VL4D2KW7TC

Sprenger, Simone A.; Levelt, Willem J. M.; Kempen, Gerard 2006. Lexical access during the production of idiomatic phrases. – Journal of Memory and Language, 54 (2), 161–184. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2005.11.001

Swinney, David A.; Cutler, Anne 1979. The access and processing of idiomatic expressions. – Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour, 18, 522–534. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(79)90284-6

Titone, Debra A.; Connine, Cynthia M. 1994. Descriptive norms for 171 idiomatic expressions: Familiarity, compositionality, predictability, and literality. – Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 9 (4), 247–270. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327868ms0904_1

Titone, Debra A.; Connine, Cynthia M. 1999. On the compositional and noncompositional nature of idiomatic expressions. – Journal of Pragmatics, 31, 1655–1674. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(99)00008-9

Van Lancker Sidtis, Diana; Cameron, Krista; Bridges, Kelly; Sidtis, John J. 2015. The formulaic schema in the minds of two generations of native speakers. – Ampersand, 2, 39–48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amper.2015.02.001

Yoshikawa, Hiroshi 2008. International intelligibility in world Englishes: Focusing on idiomatic expressions. – Intercultural Communication Studies, 17 (4), 219–226. https://web.uri.edu/iaics/files/16-Hiroshi-Yoshikawa.pdf (8.4.2019).




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5128/ERYa15.02

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2019 Rita Anita Forssten

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

ISSN 1736-2563 (print)
ISSN 2228-0677 (online)
DOI 10.5128/ERYa.1736-2563