Abstract

Formulaic sequences are found to be processed faster than their matched novel phrases in previous studies. Given the variety of formulaic types, few studies have compared processing on different types of formulaic sequences. The present study explored the processing among idioms, speech formulae and written formulae. It has been found that in addition to the processing advantage of formulaic sequences as compared to the nonformulaic phrases, frequent written formulaic sequences were processed faster than the infrequent idioms. The results suggested that when processing advantage was concerned, both the holistic storage view and the frequency effect need to be considered.

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