Frequency Effects On Mental Representation Of English Word Structure By Chinese Learners Of English

In recent decades,there are many researches probing into the processing mechanism of English complex words by both L1 and L2 learners.However,how the derived words are stored in mental lexicon,in particular,the effects of relative frequency on the representation of English derived words,is still controversial.Based on the existing researches,this thesis explores the influence of relative frequency of the English derived word and its base,along with the influence of language proficiency,on the representation of derived words in L2 learners’ mental lexicon.In addition,this thesis also compares the results of L1 and L2 learners in these respects.20 non-English majors,20 English majors,and 10 professors of English from a comprehensive key university in China participated in this research.The tasks are to read the test sentences on request.The test words contain 14 prefixed words and 6 suffixed words,all divided into either “words which are more frequent than the bases they contain” or “words which are less frequent than the bases they contain”.As the result shows,the relative frequency of derived words has effects on L2 learners,especially advanced L2 learners.For advanced Chinese L2 learners,a word whose derived form is highly frequent relative to its base is more likely to be stored as a whole in their mental lexicon,and for a word whose derived form is less frequent than its base,it is more likely to be stored as decomposed parts.As for learners of intermediate and relatively low proficiency levels,they follow a similar dual-route model for suffixed words based on the relative frequency of the derived word and its base,but they prefer to follow a whole-word model for prefixed words.Therefore,the mental representation of English word structure is different for learners of different language proficiency levels.And the performance by advanced L2 learners seems to be closer to that of the native speakers.