From Words to Phrases: How phrase-level frequency affects natural reading in L1 and L2 speakers

Language is creative yet systematic, featuring frequent multi-word sequences (MWS). Although readers are sensitive to MWS (phrase-level) frequency, controlled sentence experiments provide limited insight into how phrase-level and word-level frequency jointly shape natural reading. Using eye-tracking corpora of narrative reading, GECO (L1 speakers) and GECO-CN (L2 speakers), we analysed 1300 adjective–noun pairs to examine phrase-level and constituent-word frequency effects. Results revealed interactions between the two frequency measures, but with both showing distinct patterns across language proficiency groups. For L1 speakers, word-constituent frequency effects were strongest when phrase-level frequency was low, but weakened or became inhibitory when phrase-level frequency was high. However, for L2 speakers, word-constituent frequency effects increased with greater phrase-level frequency, and overall, both word- and phrase-level effects were stronger than in L1 speakers. These findings suggest that frequent MWS become entrenched in memory and that language proficiency modulates the reliance on phrasal versus lexical information during reading.