It has been well documented that formulaic language (such as collocations; e.g., provide information) enjoys a processing advantage over novel language (e.g., compare information). In natural language use, however, many formulaic sequences are often inserted with words intervening in between the individual constituents (e.g., provided information → provide some of the information). Whether or not the processing advantage persists in nonadjacent forms remains largely unknown. The present study thus sought to address this gap by recording the eye movements of Chinese native speakers when they were reading sentences embedded with formulaic sequences (high frequency collocations) versus novel phrases (low frequency controls), in their adjacent (e.g., 解决困难 ‘resolve difficulties’ vs. 经历困难 ‘experience difficulties’), short-insertion (e.g., 解决这些困难 ‘resolve these difficulties’ vs. 经历这些困难 ‘experience these difficulties’), and long-insertion forms (e.g., 解决了这么多困难 ‘resolved so many difficulties’ vs. 经历了这么多困难 ‘experienced so many difficulties’). Results suggested that the processing advantage for formulaic language over novel language existed not only in their adjacent form, but also in their short-insertion form, albeit the magnitude of the processing advantage diminished with the increase of insertion length. The persistence of FL processing advantage is in line with usage-based approach to language learning, processing, and use.
