The Representation Of L2Compound Words In Chinese-English Bilinguals From The Perspective Of Translation

The present study probed into the mechanism of compound word representation and processing in Chinese English learners.32postgraduates of Fujian Normal University majoring in English participated in translation of English compounds task in this experiment. The results showed that the semantic transparancy of English compound words had an effect on the process and representation of English compounds even in translation task, which was consistent with some other studies conducted with lexical decision task. In addition, there was co-activation of non-target language-Chinese, the lexical status of the translation equivalents in Chinese affected the representation of English compounds, therefore, the transparency of English (L2) compounds and the lexicality of the translation equivalents in Chinese (L1) together affected the representation and access of English (L2) compounds. Besides, semantically opaque English (L2) compounds were more prone to be connected with the bilingual mental lexicons on lexical level, while transparent English (L2) compounds were more prone to be connected on conceptual level; apart from that, the present study verified the stage models of compound processing.