Representation of German binomials : evidence from speech production

Abstract

Binomials (e.g., German Ebbe und Flut; 'ebb and flow') are a common phenomenon of many languages, but little is known about how they are stored, produced and processed. We tested the production of German nominal binomials and compared their onset latency to the onset latency of forms in which onepart of the binomial was replaced by an alternative constituent that was phonologically similar to the original (e.g., Brut as an alternative to Flut). Studies on multi-word phrases and idioms suggest that such frequently occurring expressions are accessed faster and produced with shorter duration than infrequent forms, suggesting that they are accessed as a single unit, rather than word-by-word. We hypothesized single storage for frequent binomials and expected shorter onset latencies and constituent durations for original binomial forms than for alternatives. This is what our results show. They hence lend support that advocate single representations for frequent constructions.