The Processing of English Derived Words by Chinese‐English Bilinguals

Abstract

This study examined the sensitivity of Chinese‐English bilinguals to derivational word structure in English. In the first experiment, English monolinguals showed masked priming effects for prime‐target pairs related both transparently (e.g., hunter‐HUNT) and opaquely (e.g., corner‐CORN) but not for those related purely in terms of form (e.g., freeze‐FREE), whereas bilinguals showed priming in all three conditions. Furthermore, stronger form priming was found for bilinguals who were less experienced in English. A second experiment showed that bilingual participants found it harder to identify items as nonwords when the words possessed a suffix (e.g., animalful) than when they did not (e.g., animalfil), and this was true in terms of accuracy even for bilinguals with less exposure to English. Overall, these findings suggest that Chinese‐English bilinguals, regardless of proficiency, have some sensitivity to morphological structure and that greater proficiency leads to priming effects that tend to pattern more like those of monolinguals.

Morphological decomposition in Bantu: a masked priming study on Setswana prefixation

“…In the present study, however, we found significant orthographic priming effects. This is more in line with previous research on non-native speakers (Diependaele et al, 2011;Feldman et al, 2010;Heyer & Clahsen, 2015;J. Li, Taft, et al, 2017;J.…”

“…*flexint-flex), or reduced, such as in speakers with lower proficiency (see J. Li, Taft, et al, 2017;Taft, Li, & Beyersmann, 2018), as may be the case of our Setswana speakers. However, we found priming for prime-target pairs that overlap word-initially (e.g.…”

“…when it is their weaker language (J. Li, Taft, et al, 2017). Because Setswana is mostly a spoken language that is not commonly used for written communication, this reasoning may also apply to our study, as the speakers we tested may be more proficient in reading in English than in Setswana.…”

Variability and Consistency in First and Second Language Processing: A Masked Morphological Priming Study on Prefixation and Suffixation

“…Masked priming studies, for example, revealed efficient priming effects for both the head and the modifier components of compounds, and for both transparent and opaque compounds (Beyersmann et al., ; Duñabeitia, Laka, Perea, & Carreiras, ; Fiorentino & Fund‐Reznicek, ). Furthermore, studies comparing L1 and proficient L2 speakers found similar effects of decomposition of compounds for both speaker groups (González Alonso, Baquero Castellanos, & Müller, ; M. Li et al., ; Uygun & Gürel, ). Priming studies of inflection, on the other hand, have led to more variable outcomes.…”

“…Furthermore, L2 processing of morphologically complex words has been found to be more susceptible to surface form prime–target overlap than L1 processing. Unlike L1 control groups, advanced bilinguals showed significant priming effects for orthographically related items in a number of masked priming experiments (Diependaele, Duñabeitia, Morris, & Keuleers, ; Feldman, Kostić, Basnight‐Brown, Đurđević, & Pastizzo, ; Heyer & Clahsen, ; J. Li, Taft, & Xu, ; M. Li, Jiang, & Gor, ).…”