Abstract
In this study, we investigated automatic translation from English to Chinese and subsequent morphological decomposition of translated Chinese compounds. In two lexical decision tasks, Chinese-English bilinguals responded to English target words that were preceded by masked unrelated primes presented for 59 ms. Unbeknownst to participants, the Chinese translations of the words in each critical pair consisted of a fully opaque compound word (i.e., a compound with two constituent morphemes that were semantically unrelated to the compound) and a monomorphemic word that was either the first or the second morpheme of the compound. The data revealed that bilinguals responded faster to English word pairs whose Chinese translations repeated the first morpheme than to English word pairs whose Chinese translations did not repeat the first morpheme, but no effect of hidden second-morpheme repetition was found. This effect of hidden first-morpheme repetition suggests that participants translated English words to Chinese and decomposed the translated compounds into their constituent morphemes. Because the primes were presented for only 59 ms, translation and morphological decomposition must be fast and automatic.
Highlights
A fundamental question about bilinguals’ ability to translate words between two languages is whether this translation process operates under the bilinguals’ conscious control and automatically and unconsciously when they read words in one of their languages
Do Chinese-English bilinguals automatically translate English to Chinese? Second, if they activate opaque Chinese compounds through such automatic translation, do they decompose the compounds into their constituent morphemes? In Experiment 1, participants completed a lexical decision task in which on each critical trial, the English translation of a fully opaque Chinese compound was used as the target, and that target was preceded by a masked, briefly presented English prime whose Chinese translation corresponded to the first or second morpheme of the Chinese compound
Participants completed a lexical decision task in which English targets corresponding to single morphemes in Chinese were preceded by masked English primes, presented for 59 ms, that corresponded to opaque Chinese compounds that included those morphemes
Summary
Participants were 64 Chinese-English bilinguals (32 in Experiment 1 and 32 in Experiment 2) and 64 English monolinguals (32 in Experiment 1 and 32 in Experiment 2). At the time of the experiments, the bilingual participants had studied English for an average of 12 years and had been living in the United Kingdom for an average of 14 months. In Experiment 1, the English translations of these compounds were used as target words. The critical primes in Experiment 2 were English translations of the 40 Chinese opaque compounds. A new set of 40 English words matched in length and lexical frequency with the critical primes were used as control primes in. All pseudoword targets were primed with legitimate English words. Counterbalanced lists of word pairs (four in Experiment 1 and two in Experiment 2) were constructed so that each target appeared once in each list, but each time in a different priming condition.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
