Abstract Chinese Quadrisyllabic Idiomatic Expressions (henceforth QIEs) are highly productive in the modern language. They can be used to understand cognitive processing of structure and meaning during reading comprehension, as patterning [ qian-A-wan-B ] ‘1k-A-10k-B’ (e.g. one-thousand army ten-thousand horse). However, little is known about underlying mechanisms QIEs comprehension. Adopting f...