Research On English Semantic Ambiguity Resolution

Ambiguity is a common language phenomenon for the research on the ambiguity resolution is beneficial for the understanding of the processing mechanism of human language. Chinese college students are chosen as the subjects whose second language is English, and four experiments are conducted to explore the access and resolution of semantic ambiguity.Through the priming paradigm and lexical decision task, we designed Chinese and English probes experiments in the lexical and sentential contexts. And totally 176 English majors and 56 non-English majors from three universities in Wuhan have taken part in the experiments. The results show that:(1) In the lexical context the resolution of English homograph ambiguous words. In the early processing the dominant meaning was activated no matter the context was appropriate. The relative meaning frequency played the leading role. And then context began to function in longer SOA while the meanings consistent with the context were activated.(2) In the sentential context with Chinese probes the resolution of English homograph ambiguous words. English majors obtained slight priming in the early processing and the meanings were primed in the appropriate contexts after longer SOA, while non-English majors could not access the semantics in the early processing and they need longer SOA to integrate the meanings. It was found that the context consistency competed with the relative meaning frequency.(3) In the sentential context with English probes the resolution of English homograph ambiguous words. English majors also need longer SOA to integrate the meanings where the context consistency competed with the relative meaning frequency so that they could not automatic process second language. The lexical representation of the second language could only access the conceptual representation via the corresponding lexical representation of its first language. Second language context and relative meaning frequency depend on the proficiency of the second language.