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THE PROCESSING OF ENGLISH PREFIXED WORDS BY CHINESE-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 May 2019

Junmin Li*
Affiliation:
Zhejiang University City College
Marcus Taft
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Junmin Li, School of Foreign Language, Zhejiang University City College, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. Email: lijunm@zucc.edu.cn

Abstract

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.

Type
Research Report
Open Practices
Open materials
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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Footnotes

The research was supported by a grant from Zhejiang Philosophy and Social Science Fund (19NDJC184YB). The authors would like to thank editor and anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

The experiment in this article earned an Open Materials badge for transparent practices. The materials are available at https://www.iris-database.org/iris/app/home/detail?id=york:936203.

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