Semantic Organizational Mode Of English Verbs In Chinese EFL Learners' Mental Lexicon

L2 mental lexicon organization is an important dimension of L2 lexical competence. Until now, research on L2 mental lexicon concerns primarily on the organization of the mental words of all categories as a whole. Few studies focused on specific word category. In view of the critical role of verbs in English, this thesis presents a study of Chinese ESL learners'mental organizational mode on English verbs. This study explored the role of semantic links and the inner organizational mode in Chinese ESL learners'mental verb construction by addressing the following three questions. The first one is concerned with the three kinds of linking factors that connected verbs together, including the phonological links, the semantic links and the syntagmatic links. The second is related to the two organizational modes of L2 mental verbs. The third one deals with the comparison between sub-classes of verbs, the action verbs and the event verbs in terms of their way of organization.On the basis of review on the related theoretical and empirical studies, the author assumed that the semantic links plays a critical role in the mental construction of L2 verbs; that the verb organization is more likely to be matrix-like rather than hierarchical; and that there might be slight differences between the mental construction of action verbs and event verbs.In order to test the hypothesis, two related and mutually complementary experiments aligned to the hypothesis are designed to examine the Chinese ESL learners'mental verb organization. The experiments were implemented among the Non-English major college students from Ningbo University. The actual numbers of subjects are 34 and 36 respectively.The first experiment is a traditional word association test. Subjects were required to give three response words to each prompt word. The results of this experiment indicate a predominant role of semantic links since the paradigmatic response type takes a much higher portion than the other ones.The second experiment is a word sorting and scaling test. It was designed to check the hierarchical or matrix-like organizational mode of L2 mental verbs. The test is composed of three tasks: the unconstrained clustering task, the similarity scaling task and the binary sorting task. Results from this test strongly support the hierarchical organizational view. It is indicated that the clustering score of verbs can be better predicted by the hierarchical score than matrix score. According to the design of the word sorting and scaling test, this study can be interpreted as an evidence for the hierarchical organizational view.In summary, the results of the two experiments are consistent with each other in terms of the verb group differences. The action verbs and the event verbs form a quite similar way of organization from both the linking factors and the organizational mode perspectives. No evidence can be found from this study to support the group difference view.This study has both theoretical and pedagogical implications. Theoretically, it sufficiently supports the semantic linking view and the hierarchical organizational view of L2 mental verbs. Pedagogically, it is expected that the present study can help to facilitate L2 vocabulary teaching and learning.