L1 and L2 processing of Chinese VO compounds

While words are considered as the minimal unanalyzable units in syntax, separable VO compounds appear to be manipulated via phrase-level rules with each constituent behaving as a syntactic free word. The dual status of VO compounds has been long been debated among linguists, and varying perspectives have been offered to define their representations in the lexicon. Also, in second language acquisition of Chinese, VO compounds have been pointed out as one of the most challenging features for learners because their understanding of VO compounds may be biased towards lexical representations. Given the unique position of VO compounds in Chinese linguistics and second language acquisition of Chinese, the present study examined the L1 and L2 processing of VO compounds using psycholinguistic methods to address the following research questions: 1. Are VO compounds accessed as phrases or words by L1 and L2 speakers? 2. Can L1 and L2 speakers process the syntactic structure of VO compounds efficiently during online processing? Regarding the first research question on the lexical access of VO compounds, Experiments 1 and 2 in the present study used a lexical decision task and a self-paced reading task respectively and proved that VO compounds exist as words in the L1 mental lexicon. Furthermore, it was found that learners rely on the morpheme-level information and distinguish VO and VV compounds based on the form class of morphological components. With respect to the second research question on the syntactic processing of VO compounds, Experiment 3 using a self-paced reading confirms that learners tend to rely heavily on the lexical storage as they were found to favor the ungrammatical suffixation of VO compounds (VO+aspect) over the grammatical suffixation (V+Aspect+O). Furthermore, learners’ over-acceptance of the ungrammatical suffixation appears to fossilize as their ability to process the syntactic reanalysis of VO compounds remains unchanged even with increase in proficiency level. Experiment 4 examined the structural processing of VO compounds that are presented in non-separated forms using a visual priming lexical decision task. In Experiment 4, both L1 and L2 speakers were found insensitive to the syntactic structure of non-separated VO compounds as no structural priming effect was obtained from VO phrases. Furthermore, L2 learners were found sensitive to the morphological components of Chinese compounds. The inhibitory effect of VV compound primes preceding VO compound targets suggests that learners actively employ a decomposition process and were disrupted by the mismatch of form class in the morphological components between VO and VV compounds. In summary, the present study proposes that VO compounds are stored as words in the L1 mental lexicon, and the syntactic analysis takes place as a post-hoc operation when required by a context. Also, it is suggested that L2 learners’ over-reliance on lexical storage may prevent them from processing the syntactic analysis of VO compounds in a native-like manner.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

East Asian Languages and Cultures

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Maeng, Junghwan

Contributors dc:contributor

• Packard, Jerome
• Christianson, Kiel
• Ionin, Tania
• Shih, Chilin

• Chinese morphology
• second language acquisition
• psycholinguistics
• Chinese separable words

Statement dc:rights

• © 2022 Junghwan Maeng

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115700

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F115700