Crutchley, Alison (2007) Comprehension of idiomatic verb +
particle constructions in 6- to 11-year-old children. First
Language, 27 (3). pp. 203-226. ISSN 0142-7237Metadata only
available from this repository. The ability to comprehend non-
literal language is still developing throughout the school
years. This study analysed the responses of a large stratified
sample of 6- to 11-year-old children to a forced-choice picture
selection task testing a common type of idiomatic expression:
verb+particle constructions such as `look up' and `call off'.
Effects for frequency were found in children's comprehension of
particular verb+particle constructions. Furthermore, distractor
analysis revealed that children may not have been applying
simple decompositional semantic strategies in their attempts to
comprehend unfamiliar verbs. It seemed that syntactic features
of the verbs were also taken into account, and that children
made use of contextual information only in certain
circumstances. It is argued that children's choi