Possibility of semantic involvement in theL1-L2 congruency effect in the processingof L2 collocations

Junko YamashitaNagoya University

A growing body of second language (L2) research has identified the congru-ency effect in the processing of L2 collocations (L2 collocations that haveword-for-word translation equivalents in learners’ first language [L1] areprocessed more quickly and accurately than those that have no such formsin L1). However, the locus of this effect has yet to be fully understood. Thisstudy explored the possibility of semantic involvement in this phenomenonby categorizing congruent and incongruent items used in the past studiesaccording to the semantic transparency of collocations. Results showed aclear dominance of transparent items in the congruent category and that ofopaque items in the incongruent category, suggesting the possibility ofsemantic involvement in the congruency effect. However, considerations ofother factors observed in the pertinent studies led to the conclusion thatthere is something more in the congruency effect beyond semantic trans-parency.

Keywords: collocation, congruent, incongruent, semantic transparency, L1influence, item analysis

1. Introduction

The importance of competence in multiword expressions in fluent language usehas been widely recognized in the community of L2 researchers and educators.The concept of multiword expressions is broad and includes a wide range of lin-guistic units such as idioms, collocations, binominals, lexical bundles, and phrasalverbs. Boundaries between them are often fuzzy. This paper focuses on colloca-tions and explores the locus of one of the frequently observed phenomena in theprocessing of L2 collocations: the (L1-L2) congruency effect.

https://doi.org/10.1075/jsls.17024.yamJournal of Second Language Studies 1:1 (2018), pp. 60–78. issn 2542-3835 | e-issn 2542-3843© John Benjamins Publishing Company

1.1 Identifying collocations

Although the term “collocation” is well-known in the field of linguistics andapplied linguistics, defining collocation is not an easy task because there is no uni-versally accepted conceptualization; people can work on similar but varying defi-nitions according to their specific purposes and contexts. In this paper, we definecollocations as commonly occurring lexical patterns that are determined by con-ventions in the language rather than grammatical rules or exclusively semanticrestrictions. Thus, one characteristic of collocation is the arbitrariness in form-ing word combinations that are natural in a given language. For example, in Eng-lish, “strong” collocates with “wind” but not with engine (“strong wind”, *“strongengine”), while “powerful” collocates with “engine” but not “wind” (*“powerfulwind”, “powerful engine”). Some collocations are cross-linguistically sharable(e.g., “big eyes” or “drink water”, in English and Japanese), while others are lan-guage-specific and non-sharable (e.g., “kill time” in English and “crush time” inJapanese).

There are two main approaches that have been used in identifying colloca-tions. One is what is called the phraseological approach, which uses linguisticproperties of collocations as guiding principles. A well-received, influentialframework is Howarth’s (1998) collocation continuum, where he proposed fourcategories that encompass gradual shifts in meanings and substitutability of con-stituent words of collocations. At one end of the continuum is free combinations(or open/free collocations), where constituent words are used in their literal senseand can be substituted by different words without affecting the meaning of theother (“blow a trumpet”, “carry a trumpet”, examples are from Howarth). Next toit on the continuum is restricted collocations, where one of the constituent wordsis used in its literal sense but the other is used in a specialized, figurative, or tech-nical sense (“blow a fuse”). The third is figurative idioms that have both literal andmetaphorical meanings (“blow your own trumpet”). When they are used in themetaphorical sense, no component words can be substituted (i.e., the expression isfixed). The last one at the other end of the continuum is pure idioms, which is themost fixed expressions without allowing the substitution of component words andhas a unique meaning that cannot be derived from its constituent words (“blowthe gaff”). Another approach can be called the statistical approach, which owesmuch to corpus linguistics. The approach attempts to identify collocations quan-titatively by way of computational, statistical figures available from large corpora.The frequency of occurrence is one common index, but various indices (e.g., t-scores and MI scores) that denote the strength of association of constituent wordsare also used (Schmitt, 2010). Researchers who take experimental approaches tothe processing of collocations tend to employ statistical approaches either exclu-

Semantic involvement 61

sively or in combination with phraseological considerations. An advantage of sta-tistical approaches for this type of research lies in the objective and numericalinformation obtained for each collocation, which researchers can utilize for exper-imental control over their variables or to test their models predicting collocationalprocessing.

1.2 Congruency effect in the processing of L2 collocations

Research in the processing of collocations lags behind that of idioms (Gyllstad &Wolter, 2016). However, recent advancement in this area suggested several factorsthat may impact the processing of L2 collocations, which include L1-L2 congru-ency (Wolter & Gyllstad, 2011, 2013; Wolter & Yamashita, 2017; Yamashita & Jiang,2010), L2 proficiency (Wolter & Gyllstad, 2013; Wolter & Yamashita, 2015, 2017;Yamashita & Jiang, 2010), frequency of collocations (Durrant, 2014; Wolter &Gyllstad, 2013, Wolter & Yamashita, 2017), frequency of constituent words (Wolter& Yamashita, 2017), and semantic transparency of collocations (Gyllstad & Wolter,2016). Among these findings, one of the most robust phenomena repeatedlyreported among the studies is the processing advantage of congruent collocations,that is, L2 collocations that have word-for-word translation equivalents in learn-ers’ L1 are processed more quickly and accurately than those that have no suchL1 counterparts (called [L1-L2] congruency effect in this paper). This phenome-non is observed even among exceptionally high proficiency L2 learners such asthose in Wolter & Gyllstad (2013), for example, whose proficiency was estimated(according to Durrant, 2014) at the highest levels (C1 or C2) of the Common Euro-pean Framework of Reference, suggesting the persisting L1 influence on the pro-cessing of L2 collocations. It is worth mentioning that the processing advantage ofcongruent collocations has not been found for native speakers (NS). This contrastbetween NSs and non-native speakers (NNS) makes a strong case supporting theL1 influence in L2 collocational processing.

Given the strong impact of L1-L2 congruency, researchers have attempted toexplain the mechanisms causing this phenomenon. A plausible account is auto-matic and spontaneous activation of L1 lexical networks during the processingof L2 collocations by analogy with research on bilinguals’ single word process-ing (e.g., Wu & Thierry, 2010; Wu, Cristino, Leek, & Thierry, 2013; Zhang, VanHeuven, & Conklin, 2011) and L2 idiom processing (details below). However,some research outcomes have posed a question to this account. Wolter and Gyll-stad (2013) examined L2-only (felicitous collocations in L2 but infelicitous inL1, namely, incongruent collocations) and congruent collocations using a phraseacceptability judgment task and included frequency of L1 collocations as a possi-ble predictor of processing of congruent collocations along with the frequency of

62 Junko Yamashita

L2 collocations and other variables. The rationale is that if L1 collocations are acti-vated, L1 collocational frequency will manifest significant effects. However, theyfound no such effect, though they did find the effect of frequency of L2 collo-cations. Wolter and Yamashita (2015) examined L2-only collocations and L1-onlycollocations (translated L1 collocations that are infelicitous in L2) with a lexicaldecision task (LDT). The rationale is that if L1 collocations are activated duringthe processing, L1-only collocations will display differences from baseline itemseven if they do not exist in L2. However, the results did not support the expecta-tion. Wolter and Yamashita (2017) further investigated the possibility of (non)acti-vation of L1 by examining congruent collocations along with L2-only and L1-onlycollocations using a phrase commonality judgment task. They did demonstratethe congruency effect, but again there was no advantage of L1-only collocations.

These findings lead the researchers to contend that the locus of congruencyeffect may be more complex than simultaneous activation of L1 lexical networksor copying of L1 counterparts in the course of L2 processing. In seeking the expla-nation, Wolter and his colleagues (Wolter & Gyllstad, 2013; Wolter & Yamashita,2015, 2017) put forward the notion of the age of acquisition or order of acquisition(AoA/OoA, first proposed by Carroll & White, 1973). In simple terms, the basictenet is that what is acquired earlier is entrenched and established more firmly inmemory, which leads to processing advantages of earlier acquired items over lateracquired items. The supremacy of early acquired items, however, will often belost if no further training or input is given. Under the circumstances where earlyacquired items receive no input and later acquired items receive large amounts ofinput, advantages of the former can be taken over by the latter (Ellis & LambonRalph, 2000). For the AoA/OoA explanation to be valid, we must first assumethat congruent collocations are acquired earlier than incongruent collocations.Arriving at this assumption is not very difficult considering models of L2 lexicalacquisition and processing (e.g., Kroll & Stewart,1994; Jiang, 2000). It is likelythat when L2 learners encounter congruent collocations in L2 input, they couldunderstand and accept them on the basis of already stored L1 collocational pat-terns, whereas incongruent collocations lack this advantage. Therefore, it is fur-ther likely that congruent collocations are acquired with smaller amounts of inputthan what would be necessary for incongruent collocations, which would natu-rally lead to the earlier acquisition of congruent collocations. We will also need toassume that L2 learners keep being exposed to congruent and incongruent collo-cations in their L2 input. This seems commonsensical in natural settings becauseboth are legitimate collocations in L2.

However, a series of L2 idiom processing studies found the L1 influence ontranslated L1 idioms and supported automatic and non-selective activation of L1knowledge. Carrol and Conklin (2014) examined L2 idioms and translated L1

Semantic involvement 63

idioms using an LDT. NNSs showed quicker responses when they reacted to theirL1 idioms but did not show such advantage for L2 idioms. Contrarily, NSs showedquicker responses to L2 idioms (which were L1 to them) but did not do so tolearners’ L1 idioms. Carrol and Conklin (2017) used an eye-tracking method andexamined the processing of L2 idioms and translated L1 idioms embedded in asentential context. NNSs tended to read the final word of their L1 idioms morequickly than the control items but did not do so in L2 idioms. NSs, on the otherhand, read the final word of L2 idioms more quickly but did not do so in thelearners’ L1 idioms. Carrol, Conklin, and Gyllstad (2016) also used eye-tracking,and examined three sets of critical items: L2-idioms, L1-L2 congruent idioms, andtranslated L1-idioms. NNSs showed processing advantages in L1- and congruentidioms over control items, but there was no difference between L2-idioms andcontrol items. Importantly, NNSs processed L1-idioms and congruent idioms in asimilar manner. Thus, the additional representation of congruent idioms in L2 (aswell as in L1) had little effect on them. NSs showed clear processing advantagesin L2- and congruent idioms. As for learners’ L1 idioms, NSs displayed no idiomfacilitation, and their eye-movement patterns indicated their struggles in readingand making sense of translated L1-idioms (e.g., slower reading times and largerfixation counts). In addition, Carrol et al. (2016) obtained an interesting resultthat may, at least indirectly, counter the insignificant effect of L1 collocation fre-quency reported by Wolter and Gyllstad (2013). Instead of frequency, Carrol et al.used familiarity ratings of idioms as a predictor in their study. For NSs, greaterfamiliarity led to quicker understanding of L2- and congruent idioms. For NNSs,L2 familiarity affected L2-idioms only; it did not affect congruent idioms. Rather,L1 familiarity affected the processing of congruent idioms as well as L1-idioms.Although we should not be uncritically equating familiarity and frequency of lin-guistic items, it would not be unreasonable to assume some degree of correlationbetween familiarity and frequency. Seen from this (naive) point of view, Carrolet al. (2016) offered multiple pieces of evidence supporting automatic activation ofL1 knowledge in L2 idiom processing.

Thus, there are conflicting results with regard to the automatic, non-selectiveactivation of L1 knowledge among L2 studies that examined the processing ofmultiword expressions.1 The discrepancies are difficult to resolve immediatelywith many possible reasons including different linguistic units, experimentaltasks, and NNSs’ L2 proficiency. Thus, we need further efforts to elucidate the

1. Contrary to the L2 idiom studies reviewed above, some other L2 idiom processing studiesdid not find congruency effects and did not support the automatic activation of L1 idioms (e.g.,Beck & Weber, 2016). Thus, research findings are highly mixed.

64 Junko Yamashita

underlying mechanisms of congruency effect in the processing of L2 collocations(and other multiword expressions).

1.3 Semantic transparency of L2 collocations

Although there have been some insights into the semantic quality of collocationsfrom linguistic points of view (e.g., Grant & Bauer, 2004; Howarth, 1998), it isonly recently that L2 collocation research has started examining semantic issues.Gyllstad and Wolter (2016) initiated the empirical study that tests the effect ofsemantic transparency on the processing of L2 collocations. They worked withcongruent collocations only and compared the free combinations (semanticallytransparent) and collocations (restricted collocations in Howarth’s [1998] model;thus semantically less transparent). They hypothesized the processing advantageof free combinations over collocations for NNSs because of the straightforward(transparent) semantic structure of constituent words of free combinations, andno such advantage for NSs because of their plausible holistic processing of colloca-tions. The result was that not only NNSs but also NSs displayed the transparencyeffect by responding to free combinations more quickly and accurately than col-locations in the phrase acceptability judgment task.

Primarily motivated pedagogically and using a different method, Macis andSchmitt (2017) tried to estimate meaning-based nature of collocations in English.To this end, they classified 54 collocations into three semantically based categoriesby closely reading concordance lines from a large corpus (Corpus of Contem-porary American English). The three categories they used were literal colloca-tions, figurative collocations, and duplex collocations. They are close in definitionto free combinations, pure idioms, and figurative idioms, respectively, in theHowarth’s (1998) framework mentioned above. The researchers found that 78% ofcollocations were literal, 4% figurative, and 18% duplex. Although the researchersthemselves admit that this result needs to be confirmed with a much larger sampleof collocations, they argued that the proportion of collocations that have figurativemeanings is substantial enough to call for teachers’ attention to the importance ofconsidering figurative meanings when they teach collocations.

Thus, L2 researchers’ attention has now started to shift to the semantic qual-ity of collocations. Though the evidence is still limited, semantic transparencyhas a potential to be an influential factor both in processing and teaching of L2collocations.

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1.4 Purpose of the study

The present study is a preliminary attempt to examine the semantic transparencyof collocations as one of the possible factors that may underlie the congruencyeffect. The study approached this question by collecting congruent and incongru-ent collocations from the past studies that identified the congruency effect andanalyzing them in terms of semantic transparency. The rationale of this method isthat if there is any association between congruency and semantic transparency, wewould find a larger number of transparent collocations in congruent rather thanincongruent collocations (because congruency and transparency lead to fasterprocessing), and conversely a larger number of opaque items in incongruent col-locations.

2. Method

2.1 Items

Collocations were collected from five experimental studies that investigated thecongruency effect (Wolter & Gyllstad, 2011, 2013; Wolter & Yamashita, 2015, 2017;and Yamashita & Jiang, 2010). L2 was English in all these studies, and L1 waseither Swedish or Japanese. The type of collocations were either adjective-noun(AN) or verb-noun (VN) combinations. After removing overlapping items acrossstudies, 240 collocations remained for analysis (144 AN and 96 VN combina-tions). Twenty-one items were commonly used across L1-Swedish and L1-Japanesestudies. Interestingly, two of these items displayed different congruency status:the combination of “treat” and “patient” was categorized as congruent regardingSwedish but incongruent regarding Japanese, while that of “near” and “future” wasincongruent concerning Swedish but congruent concerning Japanese. When thecollected pool of total items was analyzed disregarding the L1, these two itemswere not included (thus, total k= 238). However, when items were analyzed withSwedish and Japanese groups separately, the two items were placed into appropri-ate categories in each L1 and analyzed together with other items (k= 144 and 117 inSwedish and Japanese groups, respectively).

In addition to the above-mentioned items that were all felicitous collocationsin English, Wolter and Yamashita (2015) included translated Japanese-only col-locations in their design. Those were felicitous collocations in Japanese but infe-licitous in English. Thus, these items were also incongruent collocations in thereverse sense (legitimate in L1, but not in L2). There were 54 items (27 AN and

66 Junko Yamashita

27 VN). These items were translated back into Japanese to be submitted to ratersfor semantic judgment.

2.2 Semantic judgment

This study was modeled after Gyllstad & Wolter (2016) in the method of semanticjudgment of collocations. Three raters were recruited (the author and two otherlinguists). They were all native speakers of Japanese and had PhDs in differentfields of linguistics. Their task was to classify the collocations in a randomized listinto the four categories in Howarth’s (1998) model. The raters made judgementson the English items first and the Japanese items next. When a perfect agree-ment was not achieved among the raters, the classification of the majority of thethree was adopted. Although the collocations were occasionally classified as figu-rative idioms or pure idioms, the number was too small to justify the retainmentof these categories in the following analyses. This may not be a surprise becausethese studies intended to study collocations (not idioms). Even though phrase-ological features of different types of word combinations are assumed to makegradual shifts, indicating the fuzzy boundaries between different types, and a fewitems such as “bite (the) bullet” and “early bird” that all raters judged as idiomswere seen in the item pool, the researchers must have had a respectable linguisticsense to broadly distinguish collocations from idioms. Given the small number ofitems judged as idioms, three categories (restricted collocations, figurative idioms,and pure idioms) were collapsed into one, and the resulting two categories wereused in subsequent analyses. Considering semantic transparency in componentsof collocations, one category (free combinations) is called semantically transparentand the other opaque in this paper.

2.3 Analysis

This study examined distributional features of the collocations across two condi-tions using IBM SPSS (v. 24): congruency (congruent/incongruent) and seman-tic transparency (transparent/opaque). Therefore, the 2 x 2 cross tabulation wasthe main template of analysis. This contingency table was applied to differentitem types (AN/VN) and L1s (Swedish/Japanese) as well. Chi-square analysis wasemployed to examine the deviation from the expected count in each cell by usingthe adjusted standard residual 1.96 as the cut-off point to determine the deviation(p<.05). Fisher’s exact test was applied when the expected value was less than 5.In addition, z-test was carried out to compare the proportions between semanti-cally transparent and opaque items in the category of congruent and incongruentcollocations. Namely, comparisons were made, for example, between the propor-

Semantic involvement 67

tion of congruent/transparent items and that of congruent/opaque items (Field,2013). The same analysis was also carried out for the Japanese collocations for anadditional purpose of seeing whether the findings of English collocations are alsoobserved in a different language. In this case, the contingency table was created byusing the judgments for the English-Japanese congruent collocations (k= 44) andthat for the Japanese-only collocations (k=54).

3. Results

3.1 The whole set of items

First, the whole set of the items were analyzed (k= 238). The result showed thattwo categories of semantic transparency were differently distributed between con-gruent and incongruent items, X 2(1)= 65.05, p< .001, φ=.52. Adjusted residualvalues indicated that the item counts were much larger than expected in congru-ent/transparent and incongruent/opaque cells, whereas they were much smaller incongruent/opaque and incongruent/transparent cells. Results of z-test indicatedthat the proportion of congruent items in the transparent category (61.3%) wassignificantly larger than that in the opaque category (4.3%), and conversely, theproportion of incongruent items in the transparent category (38.7%) was signifi-cantly smaller than that in the opaque category (95.7%). These results denoted thattransparent collocations dominated in the congruent than incongruent colloca-tions and opaque items did so in a reverse manner, and suggested the significantassociation between congruency and semantic transparency among the examinedcollocations.

Next, we observed whether the type of collocations (AN and VN) has anyeffect on the distributional trend found in the whole set of items. The analysesindicated the identical pattern of deviations from the expected values in bothtypes of collocations, X 2(1) =36.32, p< .001, φ= .50 (AN); X 2(1)= 28.53, p< .001,φ=.55 (VN). The proportions between transparent and opaque items were alsosignificantly different in the same manner as for the whole group of items. Thus,the collocation type did not change the relationship between congruency andsemantic transparency at least in light of AN and VN types in the current items.Table 1 summarizes item counts, adjusted residuals, and z-test results, for theTotal, AN, and VN items, respectively. Figure 1 depicts the distribution of itemcounts of all collocations. After the whole set of items were analyzed, items weresubmitted to the same analyses according to different L1s.

68 Junko Yamashita

Table 1. Results of the whole set of collocationsSm Transparency Total

Transparent Opaque

Count  103a  3b 106

% Sm Transparency  61.3%  4.3% 44.5%

congruent

Adjusted Residual  8.07 −8.07

Count  65a  67b 132

% Sm Transparency  38.7%  95.7% 55.5%

incongruent

Adjusted Residual −8.07  8.07

Total

Total Count  168  70 238

Count  64a  2b 66

% Sm Transparency  61.5%  5.1% 46.2%

congruent

Adjusted Residual  6.03 −6.03

Count  40a  37b 77

% Sm Transparency  38.5%  94.9%  53.8%

incongruent

Adjusted Residual −6.03  6.03

AN

Total Count  104  39 143

Count  39a  1b 40

% Sm Transparency  60.9%  3.2% 42.1%

congruent

Adjusted Residual  5.34 −5.34

Count  25a  30b 55

% Sm Transparency  39.1%  96.8% 57.9%

incongruent

Adjusted Residual −5.34  5.34

VN

Total Count  64  31 95

Note. Subscript letters a and b denote that the two adjacent columns are significantly different in pro-portion (e.g., 61.3% vs. 4.3% in the Total).

3.2 L1-Swedish items

Similar to the whole set of items, distributional asymmetries were observed inthe L1-Swedish items regardless of the type of collocations: X 2(1)= 50.43, p< .001,φ=.59 (all the items), X 2(1)= 25.91, p<.001, φ=.57 (AN); X 2(1) =24.55, p< .001,φ=.61 (VN). Adjusted residuals and z-tests also attested the same distributionalpattern as identified in the whole group of items. Table 2 is the summary ofL1-Swedish items.

Semantic involvement 69

Figure 1. Item counts of transparent and opaque items in congruent and incongruentcategories in the whole set of collocations

3.3 L1-Japanese items

The analyses of the L1-Japanese items replicated the aforementioned results aswell. There was distributional imbalance: X 2(1) =23.91, p< .001, φ=.45 (all theitems); X 2(1)= 12.91, p< .001, φ=.42 (AN); X 2(1) =9.38, p=.001, φ= .47 (VN),and transparent items dominated in the congruent category while opaque itemsdominated in the incongruent category. Table 3 summarizes the results from theL1-Japanese items.

3.4 Japanese collocations

Finally, the analysis of Japanese collocations also yielded the same kind ofimbalance in the distribution: X 2(1) =39.41, p< .001, φ= .63 (all the items); X2(1) =18.47, p<.001, φ= .55 (AN); and X 2(1)= 17.99, p<.001, φ=.70 (VN). Table 4lists the results of Japanese collocations. Thus, it was not only in English collo-cations but also in Japanese collocations, congruency and semantic transparencywere associated.

4. Discussion

By analyzing the semantic transparency of the items used in the past studies thatidentified the congruency effect in the processing of L2 collocations, this study

70 Junko Yamashita

Table 2. Results of L1-Swedish itemsSm Transparency Total

Transparent Opaque

Count  70a  2b 72

% Sm Transparency  69.3%  4.7% 50.0%

congruent

Adjusted Residual  7.1 −7.1

Count  31a  41b 72

% Sm Transparency  30.7%  95.3% 50.0%

incongruent

Adjusted Residual −7.1  7.1

Total

Total Count  101  43 144

Count  39a  1b 40

% Sm Transparency  68.4%  4.5% 50.6%

congruent

Adjusted Residual  5.1 −5.1

Count  18a  21b 39

% Sm Transparency  31.6%  95.5% 49.4%

incongruent

Adjusted Residual −5.1  5.1

AN

Total Count  57  22 79

Count  31a  1b 32

% Sm Transparency  70.5%  4.8% 49.2%

congruent

Adjusted Residual  5.0 −5.0

Count  13a  20b 33

% Sm Transparency  29.5%  95.2% 50.8%

incongruent

Adjusted Residual −5.0  5.0

VN

Total Count  44  21 65

Note. Subscript letters a and b denote that the two adjacent are significantly different in proportion.

found a strong association between congruency and semantic transparency. Nei-ther collocation types nor learners’ L1s exerted major effects altering this rela-tionship. Then, what does this finding imply? Given the consistent associationbetween the two focal factors, it seems reasonable to conclude that semantic trans-parency was underlying the congruency effect reported in the past studies. Sincesemantically transparent collocations are processed faster than opaque ones (Gyll-stad & Wolter, 2016), and congruent collocations were heavily loaded with trans-parent collocations, the faster processing speed may have been, at least partially,attributable to the semantic property of the items.

Semantic involvement 71

Table 3. Results of L1- Japanese itemsSm Transparency Total

Transparent Opaque

Count  42a  2b 44

% Sm Transparency  52.5%  5.4% 37.6%

congruent

Adjusted Residual  4.9 −4.9

Count  38a  35b 73

% Sm Transparency  47.5%  94.6% 62.4%

incongruent

Adjusted Residual  4.9 −4.9

Total

Total Count  80  37 117

Count  32a  2b 34

% Sm Transparency  58.2%  10.5% 45.9%

congruent

Adjusted Residual  3.6 −3.6

Count  23a  17b 40

% Sm Transparency  41.8%  89.5% 54.1%

incongruent

Adjusted Residual −3.6  3.6

AN

Total Count  55  19 74

Count  10a  0b 10

% Sm Transparency  40.0%  0.0% 23.3%

congruent

Adjusted Residual  3.1 −3.1

Count  15a  18b 33

% Sm Transparency  60.0%  100.0% 76.7%

incongruent

Adjusted Residual −3.1  3.1

VN

Total Count  25  18 43

Note. Subscript letters a and b denote that the two adjacent columns are significantly different in pro-portion.

However, there is some reason to believe that there is something more thansemantic transparency that triggered the observed congruency effect. The firstreason stems from NSs’ reactions reported in the pertinent studies. To refreshour memory, both NNSs and NSs exhibited the transparency effect (Gyllstad& Wolter, 2016), whereas only NNSs, and not NSs, displayed the congruencyeffect (Wolter & Gyllstad, 2011, 2013; Wolter & Yamashita 2017, Yamashita & Jiang2010). If the L1-L2 congruency effect was exclusively explained by semantic trans-parency, NSs in the latter group of studies should have shown the congruencyeffect as well. However, consistently across different studies, it was only NNSs

72 Junko Yamashita

Table 4. Results of Japanese collocationsSm Transparency Total

Transparent Opaque

Count  42a  2b 44

% Sm Transparency  70.0%  5.3% 44.9%

congruent

Adjusted Residual  6.3 −6.3

Count  18a  36b 54

% Sm Transparency  30.0%  94.7% 55.1%

incongruent

Adjusted Residual −6.3  6.3

Total

Total Count  60  38 98

Count  32a  2b 34

% Sm Transparency  72.7%  11.8% 55.7%

congruent

Adjusted Residual  4.3 −4.3

Count  12a  15b 27

% Sm Transparency  27.3%  88.2% 44.3%

incongruent

Adjusted Residual −4.3  4.3

AN

Total Count  44  17 61

Count  10a  0b 10

% Sm Transparency  62.5%  0.0% 27.0%

congruent

Adjusted Residual  4.2 −4.2

Count  6a  21b 27

% Sm Transparency  37.5%  100.0% 73.0%

incongruent

Adjusted Residual −4.2  4.2

VN

Total Count  16  21 37

Note. Subscript letters a and b denote that the two adjacent columns are significantly different in pro-portion.

who were affected by the congruency. Therefore, it seems reasonable to argue thatthe existence of the equivalent collocational forms in L1 have some more effectsbeyond semantic transparency.

Secondly, in the case of some incongruent collocations, there are structuraldifferences between L1 and L2. Let us take “slow learner” as a case in point withEnglish and Japanese as two relevant languages. Japanese speakers can express thesame concept in Japanese, but they would not normally use an AN phrase likeEnglish and instead use a little more complex structure such as “a learner who isslow in learning.” It would not be unreasonable to hypothesize that such cross-lin-

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guistic differences in the structure to express the same concept can affect linguis-tic processing. If we postulate L1 mediation (Kroll & Stewart, 1994), L1-Japaneselearners are likely to mentally translate and restructure “slow learner” in theJapanese way before understanding its meaning. It would be easy to imagine theheavier processing cost of this operation compared to congruent collocations, forwhich simple word for word translation results in L1 counterpart both seman-tically and structurally. If we posit the AoA/OoA account, we can imagine thatit would be harder to acquire incongruent collocations that do not have corre-sponding lexicalized forms in L1 compared to congruent collocations. Thus, suchcross-linguistic structural differences may also have something to do with thecongruency effect.

Viewed collectively, even though the current results have suggested that thecongruency effect could be attributed to the semantic transparency at least tosome extent, this study does not support the view that the semantic transparencywas the sole locus of the congruency effect found in the previous studies. Contrar-ily, careful considerations of NSs’ reactions and characteristics of items lead thisstudy to support that there was something more than mere semantic transparencythat was underlying the congruency effect identified in the past.

Results of this study offer several implications for future research. First, itwould be worth proposing that attempts should be made to examine congruencyand semantic transparency simultaneously. Gyllstad and Wolter (2016) is the firststudy that spotlighted the effect of semantic transparency in L2 collocational pro-cessing, but they only used congruent collocations, which is sensible because theycan avoid mingling transparency with congruency. By doing so, however, theirstudy did not examine the congruency and transparency effects at the same time.Expanding their study by including both conditions is certainly a way to make afurther advancement in this field. Such research endeavors will necessitate com-bining the statistical approach and phraseological approach discussed above intheir item development, the latter of which utilizes human judgments as a com-mon method of assessing the semantic quality of collocations. The method usedin this study by modeling after Gyllstad and Wolter (2016) is only one of the pos-sible ways of gathering human ratings. Future researchers may want to try dif-ferent methods such as asking non-linguists (NSs of the target language or evenL2 learners) and involving a larger number of raters. Different phraseologicalframeworks may also be applied as the basis for judgments. The second possibil-ity is to examine incongruent collocations more closely. In contrast to the rela-tively straightforward concept of congruent collocations, there are different typesof incongruency. As in the case of “slow learner” discussed above, some incongru-ent collocations may be different structurally between L1 and L2, but others may

74 Junko Yamashita

be different only lexically. How various types of incongruency results in process-ing cost may be a way to enrich our understanding of L2 collocation processing.

A different way to go forward is more linguistic rather than applied linguistic,although a better understanding of linguistic features is of course important forsecond language research. We could surmise that the association between congru-ency and semantic transparency found in this study might be a more universalphenomenon than what is confined to the currently analyzed collocations. Thereis reason to speculate about this possibility. To further this point, let us first dis-cuss a hypothetical scenario in experimental studies. In general, researchers care-fully control factors that are known to unduly influence their study. For instance,if they want to see the effect of lexical frequency on word recognition speed, theycontrol word length. If they do not do so, the average length of higher frequencywords is likely to be shorter than that of lower frequency words, because higherfrequency words tend to be shorter than lower frequency words as a natural char-acteristic of the language. In other words, if researchers do not exercise propercontrols, some natural characteristics of the language may manifest themselves inthe experimental items. With this hypothetical scenario in mind, let us reflect onthe context where congruent and incongruent items were generated in the paststudies. The researchers must have conscientiously checked and controlled var-ious factors including L1-L2 correspondences, lexical/collocational frequencies,strengths of associations, and lexical/collocational length to arrive at their finalpool of items, but they did not consider semantic transparency. This is largelybecause there was no indication of the effect of transparency available until thepublication of Gyllstad and Wolter (2016). Then, the association between trans-parency and congruency found in this study might be a reflection of some nat-ural tendency of languages. Although we need to wait for more rigorous studiesutilizing large corpora, at least a hypothesis can be created stating that cross-lin-guistically sharable collocations may be more semantically transparent, and cross-linguistically non-sharable (language-specific) collocations may be more opaquein meaning. Results of Japanese collocations, albeit to a smaller scale, add to thishypothesis.

Another interesting cross-linguistic feature observed in this study is the over-lap between Swedish and Japanese languages in terms of the congruency withEnglish collocations. Despite the fact that Swedish and Japanese are typologicallydistant languages, about 90% of items that were commonly used acrossL1-Swedish and L1-Japanese studies displayed the same congruency status againstEnglish. Although we need larger studies, there may be a tendency that colloca-tions that are sharable between two languages may have a potential to be commonin a wider range of languages. Cross-linguistic examination of the sharability ofcollocational patterns may create an interesting area of linguistic/phraseological

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inquiry shedding light on questions such as what concepts tend to be expressedby the same combination of words and what concepts tend not to across differentlanguages.

5. Conclusion

The present study attempted to explore the possibility of semantic transparencybeing the locus of the congruency effect in the processing of L2 collocations. Thestrong association between congruency and semantic transparency was foundamong the items used in the past studies, thus suggesting the possibility thatsemantic transparency was underlying the congruency effect. However, collec-tively considering several relevant factors, this study did not challenge the involve-ment of L1 influence in the congruency effect. In other words, even by acknowl-edging the association between congruency and semantic transparency, this studyhas resulted in underscoring the L1 influence in the processing of L2 collocations.As discussed above, L2 researchers have started to direct their attention to thesemantic side of collocation. This is certainly a welcome trend that leads to deep-ening our understanding of the acquisition of L2 collocations. Acquiring colloca-tions may not be limited to the knowledge and processing ability of conventionallydetermined lexical patterns, but may possibly involve the process for L2 learn-ers to go through semantic and conceptual changes in their L2 mental lexicon bylearning collocational links (Wolter, 2006). We have just started to explore the richfields of meaning based inquiry.

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Address for correspondence

Junko YamashitaGraduate School of HumanitiesNagoya UniversityFuro-cho, Chikusa-kuNagoya 464-8601Japanyamashita@nagoya-u.jp

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