Chinese EFL Learners' Interpretation Bias of the Structurally Ambiguous un-V-able Trimorphemic Words: the Incomplete Morphological Representation

HAN Bai-Jing, XUE Fen

Foreign Language Learning Theory and Practice ›› 2014, Vol. 2 ›› Issue (1) : 17-22.

PDF(877 KB)
PDF(877 KB)
Foreign Language Learning Theory and Practice ›› 2014, Vol. 2 ›› Issue (1) : 17-22.
Paper

Chinese EFL Learners' Interpretation Bias of the Structurally Ambiguous un-V-able Trimorphemic Words: the Incomplete Morphological Representation

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Abstract

The morphological analysis explores the structural ambiguity of the words derived in the un-V-able pattern. Then the investigation of the interpretation of such ambiguous words in context shows that the interpretation, following the ordered-access model, is affected by the general language proficiency and contexts, but not by the frequency of the morphological components, and that Chinese EFL learners hold a strong right-branching bias, and hardly get access to the left-branching reading due to their incomplete morphological representation, and in turn, their inflexible morphological parsing and computing.

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structural ambiguity / left/ right-branching / context / interpretation bias

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HAN Bai-Jing, XUE Fen. Chinese EFL Learners' Interpretation Bias of the Structurally Ambiguous un-V-able Trimorphemic Words: the Incomplete Morphological Representation[J]. Foreign Language Learning Theory and Practice. 2014, 2(1): 17-22
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