Abstract
Disagreements arise on the differences of semantic processing of different ambiguous words in the perspective of psycholinguistics. This paper compares the differences of the semantic processing of different types of ambiguous words of Chinese English learners by using a multiple semantic priming experiment with short. The results demonstrate the advantage in semantic processing of words of homonymy of Chinese English Learners in the multiple semantic priming experiment, but the advantage in semantic processing of words of polysemy does not always take place, as it is relevant to learners’ English levels and words’ meaning frequency. The effect of semantic processing of polysemous words is greater than that of synonymous words.
Highlights
Lexical ambiguity is a common phenomenon in language that one word shape corresponds to several different meanings
The results demonstrate the advantage in semantic processing of words of homonymy of Chinese English Learners in the multiple semantic priming experiment, but the advantage in semantic processing of words of polysemy does not always take place, as it is relevant to learners’ English levels and words’ meaning frequency
The result of the experiment showed that lexical judgement response speed of high and low-level Chinese English learners in different meaning-biased priming experiments with semantic relation of UR was significantly faster than that with semantic relation of UU in multiple semantic priming, which means that there was the advantage in semantic processing of homonymous words
Summary
Lexical ambiguity is a common phenomenon in language that one word shape corresponds to several different meanings. The meaning of the word “door” is a piece of wood or glass that is opened and closed so that people can get in and out of a room or building in the sentence “Mary painted the door”, while its meaning is the space when a door is open in the sentence “Mary walked through the door” (Klepousniotou, 2007: 19). Both “bank” and “door” are the ambiguous words which have two or more meanings, there are different relationships between their meanings. Are these two types of ambiguous words the same as the mental representations?
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