Chinese EFL Learners’ Interpretations Of English Ambiguous Noun-noun Combinations

It is a common phenomenon that noun-noun combinations are created to express acomplex concept. People have no difficulty in creating novel noun-noun combinationsand understanding these combinations. The combination of nouns is of greatimportance, because it is a natural way to enlarge the language system and it revealsthe certain mechanism of combining two simple concepts. However, no agreementwas reached on the mechanism of conceptual combination of nouns in previousresearch. Two controversial models were proposed by previous studies: the model ofschema modification theory and the model of CARIN theory. The bone of thecontention is the influences of the two noun concepts and thematic relations in theconceptual combination. These influences were investigated in the interpretation ofambiguous noun-noun combinations in research of CARIN theory. Nevertheless,previous studies were mainly conducted in English native speakers. Studies in EFLlearners were few in number. Studies about EFL learners of different proficiencylevels were even less. The present study, through investigating the interpretation ofambiguous noun-noun combinations of Chinese EFL learners in two proficiencygroups, explores the conceptual combination of ambiguous noun-noun combinations.Three research questions are raised in this study:1) Does the modifier or the headplay a larger role in the interpretation of ambiguous noun-noun combinations?2)Dose the activation of dominant and subdominant relations ease the interpretation ofambiguous noun-noun combinations?3) Do the high proficiency Chinese EFLlearners and the low proficiency Chinese EFL learners interpret ambiguousnoun-noun combinations differently?An experiment was designed in this study to answer the research questions. Alexical decision task under priming paradigm was employed. The influences of twocomponents and three relation types are investigated in two proficiency groups ofChinese EFL learners. The following three findings are contributed by the experiment: 1) Chinese EFL learners tend to produce a thematic relation to link the two nouns.2)The role of the head noun concept is great in the activating of relation information,evaluating the plausibility of the relations and elaborating the selected relation.3) Thedifference of the interpreting process of the high proficiency group and the lowproficiency group was not significant. Their performance fit the explanation of thedual process theory.The findings of the present study provide empirical support for the dual processtheory and revise the theory for Chinese EFL learners. It also provides richimplications for further studies of the conceptual combination of ambiguousnoun-noun combinations.