Imagine you’re a chef and you have a bunch of different recipes. Some recipes have set ingredients and steps that you always follow, while others give you some freedom to mix things up. Well, it turns out our brains work in a similar way when processing language! Previous research has shown that we process familiar phrases faster than new ones, but what about phrases that have a little variation? To find out, scientists conducted a series of experiments using binomial phrases with different conjunctions. They discovered that even when the conjunctions were not the usual ones we expect, our brains still read the familiar part of the phrase faster than the new parts. This advantage in processing speed was observed across different types of tasks, from filling in missing words to reading at our own pace. Interestingly, this advantage was not driven by how often we encounter these phrases or the specific words used. Instead, it seems to be related to the way our brain connects certain words together in our memory. These findings shed light on how our brains handle variations in language and provide important insights for understanding how we store and process multiword chunks. So if you’re curious about the inner workings of our language processing abilities, go ahead and delve into the full article!

Abstract
Prior research has shown that various types of conventional multiword chunks are processed faster than matched novel strings, but it is unclear whether this processing advantage extends to variant multiword chunks that are less formulaic. To determine whether the processing advantage of multiword chunks accommodates variations in the canonical phrasal template, we examined the robustness of the processing advantage (i.e., Predictability) of binomial phrases with non-canonical conjunctions (e.g., salt and also pepper; salt as well as pepper). Results from the cloze study (Experiment 1) showed that there was a high tendency of producing the canonical conjunct (pepper), even in the binomials that contained non-formulaic conjunctions. Consistent with these findings, results from two eye tracking studies (Experiments 2a and 2b) showed that canonical conjuncts were read faster than novel conjuncts that were matched on word length (e.g., paprika), even in the binomials with variant conjunctions. This robust online processing advantage was replicated in a self-paced reading study that compared all three Conjunction Types (Experiment 3). Taken together, these findings show that binomials with variant function words also receive facilitated processing relative to matched novel strings, even though both types of strings are neither conventional nor relatively frequent. Exploratory analyses revealed that this processing speed advantage was driven by the lexical–semantic association between the canonical conjuncts (salt–pepper), rather than lexical and phrasal frequency. Overall, these results highlight flexibility in the processing of multiword chunks that current models of multiword storage and processing must take into account.

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