The Lexicon Acquisition Process: Simple Lexicon Opposed to Phraseological Units in Spanish

Studies on phraseology in Spain live an era of splendor since the 1990s, in which the analysis of the phraseological facts from many and varied perspectives began. A common feature of all this scientific production is its contrastive nature, either with the aim of showing the systemic differences between the constructions of two languages, or to facilitate the teaching and learning of phraseological units in foreign languages. However, the processes of acquisition and learning of phraseological units in a native tongue have been forgotten in the field of phraseology and are scarce the studies dealing with how these linguistic units are acquired, how the process of acquisition of phraseological units relates to the acquisition of simple vocabulary or how phraseology can help in the development of other language skills in primary and secondary education. The object of this study is to present the differences existing in the process of interpretation and acquisition of phraseological units as opposed to simple lexical units, analyzing, furthermore, how the characteristics of the phraseologisms affect the processing and subsequent storage of these structures in the mental lexicon of the student.