A Review of the Effects of Frequency and Congruency on the Processing of Multiword Expressions

Abstract

More and more attention has been paid to the processing of multiword expressions in recent years. This paper reviews empirical studies that have examined the effects of frequency and congruency and their interactive role on the processing of multiword expressions. The results indicated that although frequency and congruency influence the processing of all kinds of multiword expressions, the studies mostly concentrate on collocations; their interactive role with proficiency has not been specified; research exploring the effect of congruency is limited to translational congruency. Future studies can compare the difference in the processing of different kinds of multiword expressions.