Processing MWEs: Neurocognitive Bases of Verbal MWEs and Lexical Cohesiveness within MWEs

Multiword expressions have posed a challenge in the past for computational linguistics since they comprise a heterogeneous family of word clusters and are difficult to detect in natural language data. In this paper, we present a fMRI study based on language comprehension to provide neuroimaging evidence for processing MWEs. We investigate whether different MWEs have distinct neural bases, e.g. if verbal MWEs involve separate brain areas from non-verbal MWEs and if MWEs with varying levels of cohesiveness activate dissociable brain regions. Our study contributes neuroimaging evidence illustrating that different MWEs elicit spatially distinct patterns of activation. We also adapt an association measure, usually used to detect MWEs, as a cognitively plausible metric for language processing.