Effects of Collocational Congruency,Frequency and L2 Proficiency on the Processing of English Adjective-Noun Collocations

The present study investigates the effects of congruency and frequency on adjective-noun collocational processing for Chinese learners of English at two proficiency levels based on the data obtained in an online acceptability judgment task.The subject pool of this research included 60 English majors studying at a university in China;30 were selected as a higher-proficiency group and 30 as a lower-proficiency group according to their Vocabulary Levels Test(Schmitt et al.,2001)scores and their self-reported proficiency in English.The experimental materials were programmed to E-prime 2.0 and included six types of collocations:(1)15 high-frequency congruent collocations,(2)15 low-frequency congruent collocations,(3)15 high-frequency incongruent collocations,(4)15 low-frequency incongruent collocations,(5)15 Chinese-only items,and(6)75 unrelated items for baseline data.The collected response times(RTs)and accuracy rates data were statistically analyzed by the use of an ANOVA test and pairwise comparisons through SPSS 16.0 software.The results revealed that:(1)the adjective-noun collocational processing of Chinese English learners is influenced by collocational frequency,congruency and L2 proficiency;(2)the processing time is affected by the interaction of congruency and frequency;and(3)the interactive effect of L2 proficiency in conjunction with congruency and frequency also influences the processing quality.

类指句的入场问题

认知语法从语言的交互功能出发提出了入场理论。作为一种语义功能,入场在形式上表征为语言中的入场系统,实现于一切名词短语与限定小句中。本文聚焦于名词短语入场系统(限定词系统),以汉语光杆名词为切入点,表明光杆名词表类指时并未入场,进而主张类指表达与入场因素无关,类指名词短语的限定成分与入场功能之间并不存在象似性。这表明当前入场理论存在过于严格的限制,形义一致性难以得到有效贯彻。