The Semantic Function In The Syntactic Processing

Modeled with Potter and Lombardi's sentence recall paradigm(1998) and cross-linguistic syntactic priming experimental paradigm, the present study selected Chinese EFL learners as subjects. English-English and Chinese-English syntactic priming experiments were designed to test the influences of thematic orders and L2 proficiencies on both the within- and between-languages syntactic priming effect. The study was aimed at discussing the thematic function in syntactic priming and Chinese EFL learners'internal system of syntactic representation. We found that the thematic order played a determinant role in both the English-English and Chinese-English syntactic priming, which could further prove the thematic function in the syntactic processing; meanwhile, it was also proved that L1 and L2 proficiencies will influence the access of the second language. Then, the relevant theoretical elaborations were put forward in this thesis.