The Processing of English Prefixed Words by Chinese-English Bilinguals

The present study examined whether Chinese-English bilinguals showed morphological sensitivity toward prefixed words. In the experiment, English monolinguals showed masked priming effects in a Transparent condition ("disagree-AGREE") and an Opaque condition ("mischief-CHIEF"), bu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Studies in second language acquisition 2020-03, Vol.42 (1), p.239-249
Main Authors: Li, Junmin, Taft, Marcus
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bilingualism
Chinese
Chinese languages
Comparative Analysis
English
English (Second Language)
English language
Language Processing
Metalinguistics
Monolingualism
Morphemes
Morphology
Morphology (Languages)
Prefixes
Priming
Second Language Learning
Semantics
Word Recognition
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Summary:The present study examined whether Chinese-English bilinguals showed morphological sensitivity toward prefixed words. In the experiment, English monolinguals showed masked priming effects in a Transparent condition ("disagree-AGREE") and an Opaque condition ("mischief-CHIEF"), but not in a Form condition ("stranger-ANGER"). In contrast, bilinguals showed equivalent priming effects across the three conditions. Indeed, the difference between the magnitude of priming in the Form condition relative to that in the other two conditions was statistically smaller for the bilinguals than for the monolinguals. These findings suggest Chinese-English bilinguals are less sensitive to the morphological status of prefixes, compared with monolinguals
ISSN:0272-2631
1470-1545
DOI:10.1017/S0272263119000172