Processing Chinese formulaic sequences in sentence context: a comparative study of native and non-native speakers

Abstract

This study investigates the hypothesis of holistic processing of Chinese formulaic sequences within sentence contexts, examining the performance of both native and non-native speakers. A self-paced masking experiment was conducted to collect response times and gather quantitative sentence context data for subsequent statistical analysis. The findings reveal that both native and non-native participants exhibited shorter response times for formulaic sequences compared to non-formulaic sequences. However, contextual effects were found to only impact the processing of formulaic sequences among non-native learners. The study concludes by emphasizing the importance of contextual effects in L2 teaching and highlighting the theoretical and pedagogical implications of the research on formulaic sequences in L2 usage.