Why are multiword units hard to acquire for late L2 learners? Insights from cognitive science on adults’ learning, processing and retrieval.

Multiword units have experienced renewed interest in recent research due to their prominent role in usage-based approaches to general linguistics, as well as in work on bilingualism and second language acquisition. While work in the last few decades focused on figurative multiword units (i.e., idioms), a growing number of studies are recently focusing on non-figurative units (e.g., collocations, binomials or lexical bundles). This work has highlighted not only the relevance of multiword units in language, but also the particular challenges that arise for non-native speakers acquiring conventional units in a second language. I argue that, despite important findings across linguistics, psycholinguistics and psychology, our current understanding fails to benefit from a unified view. The present paper brings together insights from different strands of the literature to examine difficulties at three distinct loci, i.e., input exposure, processing and retrieval.

"De Gruyter allows authors the use of the final published version of an article (publisher pdf) for self-archiving (author's personal website) and/or archiving in an institutional repository (on a non-profit server) after an embargo period of 12 months after publication."