Processing English Mono-morphemic Nouns and Verbs for English Learners of Chinese: An ERP Study

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Online published: 2020-07-25

Abstract

The paper investigates the underlying mechanism of English mono-morphemic nouns and verbs for in English learners of Chinese based on the data obtained by ERP technology. It mainly investigates two questions: (1) Do English learners of Chinese share the same underlying mechanism in processing English mono-morphemic nouns and verbs? (2) Does word frequency influence processing English mono-morphemic nouns and verbs? By analyzing and comparing P150, P250 and N400 ERP components elicited by English nouns and verbs respectively, we find that there exist significant main effects of word class in P250 and N400 components, that the interactive effect of word class and frequency is marginally significant in terms of P250, and that the main effect of word frequency is marginally significant in terms of N400. Therefore, it is concluded that English learners of Chinese employ different mechanism to process English mono-morphemic nouns and verbs, and that word frequency has an influence in processing English mono-morphemic nouns and verbs, and that the semantically driven noun-verb disassociation can be found in the process of English mono-morphemic nouns and verbs and it is affected by word frequency.

Cite this article

CHEN Shifa, ZHU Lihui, WANG Ya, YANG Xin, GU Xiaolan, YANG Lianrui . Processing English Mono-morphemic Nouns and Verbs for English Learners of Chinese: An ERP Study[J]. Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies, 2017 , 17(06) : 51 -56 . DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1674-8921.2017.06.007

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