A Cognitive Study Of The Semantic Processing Of Directionality By Chinese EFL Learners

Motion events are closely related to human experience.Research on the expression and acquisition of motion events has always been an essential topic in linguistic and psychological studies.The majority of studies concentrating on native speakers investigate the typological features of motion event expressions in various languages as well as the typological effects on the thinking of language users.Although the study of motion events in L2 acquisition has been gradually enriched in recent years,research on motion directionality is generally overlooked,resulting in a hazy picture of how Chinese learners interpret directionality in motion events.There are a certain number of deictic verbs in both Chinese and English indicating directionality of motion events.However,the deictic verbs in English commonly act as predicates followed by particles to denote the final state of the figure,while deictic verbs in Chinese act as predicates either on their own or in combination with other verbs or localizers.According to studies,native speakers’ motor simulations are easily activated by verbs carrying concrete conceptions of directionality,known as concreteness,which facilitates the interpretation and processing of directionality.Whereas,abstract verbs may restrain the processing speed of learners as there is only semantic representations in abstract verbs.To date,it is still controversial whether concreteness effect exists in the processing of directionality among second language learners.The following three questions are addressed in this study: 1)What are the characteristics of Chinese EFL learners’ processing of directionality? 2)How do abstract and concrete verbs influence Chinese EFL learners’ processing of directionality? Is there a significant concreteness effect in their processing? 3)What are the influencing factors of Chinese EFL learners’ processing of directionality?Aided with E-prime,this study investigates Chinese EFL learners’ online processing of directionality via a series of self-paced reading tasks.By analyzing the response time and accuracy rate,this thesis aims to unfold the processing features of directionality encoded in motion events.Two experiments are conducted.Experiment1 uses the structure of “figure +（concrete/abstract）verb” and Experiment 2 adopts the structure of “figure +（concrete/abstract）verb + PP（particle + goal）” to investigate whether there is concreteness effect in the processing of directionality by Chinese EFL learners.Meanwhile,different AOIs（Experiment 2a: [verb] [particle + goal];Experiment 2b: [verb + particle] [goal]）are also employed to tap on the issue how particles exert influences on the directionality judgment.Based on the multi-dimensional data analysis,this thesis comes to the following conclusions:Firstly,verbs receive a lot of attention in the processing of directionality,showing that Chinese EFL learners rely heavily on verbs in their processing.The RTs for processing sentences in Experiment 2b（[verb + particle] [goal]）are substantially longer than those in Experiment 2a（[verb] [particle + goal]）.It suggests that the particle activates the “monitoring” mechanism in learners’ brains and causes them to double-check their directionality judgment based on verb meaning,reflecting the influence of Chinese coding mechanism of directionality.Secondly,unlike the concreteness effect among native English speakers,Chinese EFL learners’ accuracy of processing sentences with abstract verbs（especially in Experiment 2）is higher than processing sentences with concrete verbs.This phenomenon is due to two key factors.One is that concrete verbs have generative features,obstructing learners’ directionality judgment.Another is the lack of embodied effects among second language learners which means that motor simulation plays a minimal part in second language acquisition.Thirdly,meanings of verbs play a leading role in Chinese EFL learners’ processing of directionality.Furthermore,coding differences between Chinese and English preserved in learners’ brains,as well as the embodiment effects resulted by different learning methods in first and second language,also affect the processing of directionality to some extent.The findings of this study have bridged the gap in previous studies on directionality and provide a new perspective for future research on directionality of motion events.At the same time,the study may have some implications for the application of embodied theory in second language acquisition by examining the characteristics of Chinese EFL learners’ processing of directionality and the relationship between concrete and abstract verbs.However,the influence of participants’ language proficiency is not considered in the study,it is still unclear whether the processing of directionality and the concreteness effect will be quickened with the development of proficiency.Future research could enrich the empirical analysis to investigate second language learners’ mental and neurological mechanisms utilizing EEG and eye-tracking techniques.