| Mental verbs, as a subclass of verbs, represent the mental activities of human beings.They have been drawing the attention of linguists and psychologists, whose studies aremainly involved in these verbs’ features, organization, classification, semantic structure,etc.Mental verbs have long been studied as a class of verbs in Chinese grammar. As earlyas in1898, Ma Jianzhong (1845-1990) defined and classified mental verbs in his Ma ShiWen Tong, the first grammar book in China, while Lu Shuxiang (1904-1998) is the firstscholar who, in1942, clearly categorized mental verbs and named them “mental activities”.Since then, many other researchers, such as Li Jinxi (1954), Huang Borong and LiaoXudong (1980,1997), Xing Fuyi (1990), Zhou Youbin and Shao Jingmin (1993), WangHongbin (2002), Zhang Jijia and Lu Aitao (2007), have done in-depth studies in theidentification, classification, and semantic organization of such verbs, and have graduallycome up with the clear concept of “mental verbs”.Studies on mental verbs abroad are mainly found in Davison (1970), Schwanenflugelet al.(1994,1996,1999), Clark et al.(1996), Alexander et al.(1998), Olson (2006), etc.,primarily focusing on the relations between the organization of English mental verbs andthe theories of mind, between English mental verbs and the constructivist theory of mind,and between the organization of English mental verbs and the development ofmetacognitive concepts about thinking in gifted and non-gifted children, on mental verbsin different conceptual domains and different cultures, etc.Language is one important method manifesting human mental actions or states. Mental verbs, as a representation of man’s mental activities, are closely connected withpeople’s cognition and thinking, and can reflect, to a certain extent, people’s cognitivelevel and their complexity of thinking. Through the mirror reflection of language and thestudy of the semantic organization and the semantic representation of mental verbs, we can,on the one hand, find their characteristics in EFL learners’ mind, and on the other,understand the distinctive cognitive thinking features of the learners with different Englishproficiency levels.Although many achievements have been made in the studies of mental verbs at homeand abroad, more emphasis has been laid on theoretical rather than empirical studies,especially in the respect of their semantic organization, organizational dimension, semanticrepresentation, and so on. This study, based on Bloom’s (1956) cognitive domain theoryand bilingual semantic representation theory, will conduct questionnaire surveys andreaction-time-paradigm-based implicit cognition research to probe into the semanticorganization and semantic representation of English mental verbs in Chinese EFL learners’mind. The specific research questions are as follows:1. What are the semantic organization features of English mental verbs in ChineseEFL learners’ mind?(1) What overall features does the semantic organization of English mental verbsexhibit in Chinese EFL learners’ mind? What are the distinctive semantic features ofEnglish mental verbs for learners with different English proficiency levels?(2) What overall features does the semantic processing structure of English mentalverbs reveal in Chinese EFL learners’ mind? What are the distinctive semantic processingfeatures of English mental verbs for learners with different English proficiency levels?2. What characteristics does the semantic representation of English mental verbsdemonstrate in Chinese EFL learners?(3) What overall features does the intra-semantic representation of English mentalverbs exhibit in Chinese EFL learners? What are the distinctive intra-semantic features ofEnglish mental verbs for learners with different English proficiency levels? (4) What overall features does the inter-semantic representation of English mentalverbs exhibit in Chinese EFL learners? What are the distinctive inter-semantic features ofEnglish mental verbs for learners with different English proficiency levels?With questionnaire surveys and semantic priming paradigms, this study is aimed atmaking a thorough inquiry of the features of the semantic organization and semanticrepresentation of English mental verbs in Chinese EFL learners’ mind. Specifically, fourexperiments have been carried out: free classification of English mental verbs (Experiment1), similarity judgment task of English mental verb pairs (Experiment2), intra-semanticpriming effect test (Experiment3) and inter-semantic priming effect test (Experiment4).Experiments1and2are designed to answer question1while Experiments3and4are toanswer question2.Through a careful analysis and discussion of the experimental data, four majorfindings are reported as below:The first finding concerns the overall and distinctive features of English mental verbs’semantic organization in EFL learners’ mind. MDS (multidimensional scaling) analysesand regression analyses have demonstrated that, when learners are viewed as a whole, the3-dimensional model is the optimal organization mode of English mental verbs’ semanticorganization in EFL learners’ mind, better than the1-dimensional model and2-dimensionalmodel. As for the learners with different English proficiency levels, their semanticorganization of English mental verbs are quite similar, whether they are high schoolstudents, undergraduates or graduates. Of the three models, the3-dimensional one has thebest goodness of fit, showing that it is the optimal structure of English mental verbs in EFLlearners’ mind. The three dimensions are information processing dimension,semantic-relatedness dimension, and certainty dimension, of which the informationprocessing dimension takes the largest proportion and is also the most importantorganizational dimension of English mental verbs’ semantic organization while thesemantic-relatedness dimension and certainty dimension are indispensable.The second finding relates to the overall and distinctive features of English mental verbs’ semantic processing structure in EFL learners’ mind. MDS analyses and hierarchicalcluster analyses have indicated that when learners are viewed as a whole, the mental verbshave eventually formed an information processing dimension as the distinguishing featureafter a5-step cluster agglomeration. For the learners with different English proficiencylevels, the initial cluster features and the ultimate cluster features of English mental verbs’semantic processing structure in their mind are quite similar. The attributes of theseEnglish mental verbs have experienced a5-step aggregation and all finally formed theinformation processing dimension as the ultimate distinguishing feature, though obviousdifferences between the subjects exist. The English mental verbs’ semantic processingfeatures in different learners’ mind have revealed their various cognitive thinking levels.Specifically, high school students have shown more “knowledge” and “comprehension”features in their semantic organization of English mental verbs, which are regarded as thelower level in Bloom’s cognitive domain (1956). Undergraduate students have paid moreattention to “analysis” and “application” features, the higher cognitive thinking level inBloom’s cognitive domain. Graduate students have focused more on “synthesis” and“evaluation” features, the highest cognitive thinking level according to Bloom. This showsthat with the improvement of learners’ English proficiency, both their lexical semanticknowledge reorganization and cognitive thinking have gradually been promoted, from alower cognitive thinking level to a comparatively higher level.The third finding involves the examination of learners’ mental verbs’ intra-semanticpriming effect. T-test analyses and variance analyses have shown that when learners areviewed as a whole, they have reacted more quickly to the words with semantic relationsthan to the words without semantic relations. However, the RT (reaction time) differencebetween them is not significant. As for the learners with different English proficiencylevels, two groups (the undergraduate students’ group and the graduate students’ group)have reacted more quickly to the semantic-related words than to the semantic-unrelatedwords. However, the RT difference among all the three groups is not significant. Thissuggests that for all learners, their retrieval of English mental verbs has not shown significant intra-semantic-related features. This further illustrates that the organization andstorage of English mental verbs in learners’ mind are not based on the intra-semanticprinciple.The fourth finding relates to the examination of learners’ mental verbs’ inter-semanticpriming effect. T-test analyses and variance analyses have shown that learners viewed as awhole have reacted more quickly to the words with semantic correspondence than to thewords without semantic correspondence. As for the learners with different Englishproficiency levels, all the three groups (the high school students’ group, the undergraduatestudents’ group and the graduate students’ group) have reacted more quickly tosemantic-corresponding words than to semantic-non-corresponding words. And their RTdifference is also significant. This suggests that all learners’ retrieval of English mentalverbs has shown significant inter-semantic-correspondence features. This further illustratesthat the organization and storage of English mental verbs in learners’ mind are based on theinter-semantic principle.When we compare the T-test results between the three groups of subjects in theintra-semantic priming experiment and the inter-semantic priming experiment, we’vefound that learners have reacted more quickly to the intra-language form than to theinter-language form, irrespective of their English proficiency level. And the RT differenceis significant. This shows that there is a significant RT difference between theinter-language semantic integration and the intra-language semantic integration. Thisindicates that the semantic representation of English mental verbs is not beyond languageform recognition and that there are two separate semantic representation systems, ratherthan one, in bilingual learners’ mind.In conclusion, this study, probing into the semantic organization and semanticrepresentation of English mental verbs in Chinese EFL learners’ mind from the perspectiveof psycholinguistics with the empirical method, is an expansion and enrichment of Englishmental verbs’ theories. Besides, the findings of the study have implications for foreignlanguage teaching in China. Both the study of semantic organization characteristics and that of semantic representation features in Chinese EFL learners’ mind have shown that thetime between high school and college is critical in the development of learners’ semanticorganization and semantic representation of English mental verbs. At college, due to theoccurrence of the ceiling effect, the development of learners’ semantic organization and thereorganization of semantic knowledge are relatively stable. As for graduates, although theirsemantic organization and semantic representation keep developing, there is littledifference between them and undergraduate students. Therefore, both teachers and learnersof English should make the best use of the time from high school to college. During thisperiod, teachers should, on the one hand, cultivate students’ cognitive thinking ability bydesigning more activities with higher cognitive requirements, such as “analysis”,“integration” and “evaluation” both in and out of class. On the other hand, teachers shouldtry every possible means to help learners construct a strong and powerful lexical semanticnetwork to promote their quick and effective retrieval of lexical semantic knowledge. |
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