Chinese EFL learners’ morphological generalization of en verb series: Based on Construction Morphology

Abstract

Using masked priming paradigms, this study examined advanced Chinese EFL learners’ morphological generalization of en verb series compared with L1 learners. In Experiment 1, neither group of learners showed affixed or orthographic priming for suffixed words. However, both groups demonstrated priming in the prefixed condition (e.g., entitle/ENCOUNTER) relative to the orthographic (e.g., engineer/ENOUNTER) and the unrelated condition (e.g., museum/ENCOUNTER). For the L1 group, the difference between prefixed priming and repetition priming was not significant, while the L2 group's responses in the prefixed condition were significantly slower than those in the identity condition (e.g., encounter/ENCOUNTER). In Experiment 2, the prefixed pseudo en- verbs were primed by the prefixed real ones for both groups, but no suffixed priming was observed. Compared with the counterparts who hardly made errors in the LDT, the L2 group produced significantly more errors for the prefixed than for the suffixed ones. These results supported the left-to-right processing bias and indicated morphological generalization of prefixed en- verbs by Chinese EFL learners. The generalization, however, was not as automatic as that by native speakers. It may be attributed to Chinese EFL learners’ L1 transfer of phonetic representation.