A Study On The Processing Of English Derived Words In Chinese EFL Learners

Lexical processing (LP), as one of the central topics in psycholinguistic research,has been stressed in the past forty years. Among other factors influencing the LP,morphological structure (MS) has received wide attention in the recent half century. Abulk of research has been dedicated to this issue, and the agreement has been reached thatthe MS exerts an influence over the LP. Furthermore, attention has also been paid to thequestion how the morphological effect takes place through the course of the processing,even though consensus has not been reached yet. Most of these previous studies, however,have centered around how the first language (L1) speakers process the complex words(CW). By contrast, little attention has been paid to second language (L2) processing untilthe21st century. Even so, most of the L2studies have focused on the bilinguals and thehigh-proficiency L2learners, whereas the medium-and low-proficiency learners havebarely been included. Against this background, the present dissertation is devoted to theexploration of Chinese English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners' processing of thederived words (DWs), one type of the complex words (CWs) in English.To fulfill this purpose, five psycholinguistic experiments were conducted. Theresults of the first experiment with the masked priming technique showed a significantpriming effect when the targets were primed by their morphological relatives, and themagnitude of this priming effect was equal to that in the identity priming condition wherethe targets were primed by themselves. These results provided strong evidence for theexistence of the morphological decomposition (MD) in L2processing of the CWs, whichis consistent with the findings in L1studies. In the second experiment, the visual lexicaldecision task (LDT) was employed to investigate the processing routes for the DWs. Itwas found that both the full-form route and morpheme-based route were used by the L2learners, and the choice between these two routes was determined by the relative familiarity of the full-forms of the DWs to their roots, that is the ratio of the surfacefamiliarity to the root familiarity. The DWs with high surface familiarity and low rootfamiliarity (HS/LR) were processed as a whole unit while those with low surfacefamiliarity and high root familiarity (LS/HR) were processed via their roots. Thesefindings are in line with those obtained in the L1studies as well. Based on the findingsfrom the masked priming and the visual LDT, the present study indicates that the sameprocessing pattern is shared by L1speakers and L2learners. In this way, the conclusionis reached that how the CWs are processed is not determined by whether the languageusers are L1speakers or L2learners, but the characteristics of the CWs, such asfrequency, semantic transparency, formal regularity, etc. Based on these findings, adevelopmental pattern is proposed to account for the L2learners' processing of the DWs.In the other three experiments, the overt priming task with three different stimulusonset asynchrony (SOA) conditions (100ms,200ms and400ms) was adopted to examinethe time course of the processing. The results of these experiments revealed a stable andsignificant priming effect in the morphological priming condition, which significantlyexceeded that in either the orthographic or semantic priming condition. This findingindicates that the morphological relationship is fundamentally different from theorthographic overlap or the semantic association. The results also showed the significantinfluence of the semantic transparency, since the priming effect in the semantic-opaquepseudo-derivationally related condition (e.g., corner-corn) was significantly reduced,compared to that in the morphologically related condition. This finding aligns with theSupralexical Model, which posits the morphological representation on a higher level thanthe full-form orthographic representation.Put the results of all five experiments together, the present study indicates that themorphological effect takes place through the whole course of the processing, rather thanat the early stage or the late stage only. Under the influence of their MS, the CWs are decomposed into morphemes at the early stage, which provides the decompositionalroute for their processing, while at the late stage when the full-forms of the CWs havebeen activated, the activation will be sent to the morphologically related words, becausethe MS also plays a role in the organization of the mental lexicon (ML), which guides themorphologically related words to be represented interactively.The findings of the present dissertation are helpful in understanding the lexicalrepresentation and processing, and have significant implications for lexical instruction aswell.