This study investigates how orthographic,semantic and contextual variables—including word length,concreteness,and contextual support—impact on the processing and learning of new words in a second language(L2)when fi...This study investigates how orthographic,semantic and contextual variables—including word length,concreteness,and contextual support—impact on the processing and learning of new words in a second language(L2)when first encountered during reading.Students learning English as a foreign language(EFL)were recruited to read sentences for comprehension,embedded with unfamiliar L2 words that occurred once.Immediately after this,they received a form recognition test,a meaning recall test,and a meaning recognition test.Eye-movement data showed significant effects of word length on both early and late processing of novel words,along with effects of concreteness only on late-processing eye-tracking measures.Informative contexts were read slower than neutral contexts,yet contextual support did not show any direct influence on the processing of novel words.Interestingly,initial learning of abstract words was better than concrete words in terms of form and meaning recognition.Attentional processing of novel L2 words,operationalized by total reading time,positively predicted L2 learners’recognition of new orthographic forms.Taken together,these results suggest:1)orthographic,semantic and contextual factors play distinct roles for initial processing and learning of novel words;2)online processing of novel words contributes to L2 learners’initial knowledge of unfamiliar lexical items acquired from reading.展开更多
Language change is the manner in which the phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other features of a language are modified over time. Vocabulary can change quickly as new words are borrowed from other lang...Language change is the manner in which the phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other features of a language are modified over time. Vocabulary can change quickly as new words are borrowed from other languages, or as words get combined or shortened. Information and communication technologies （ICT） are one of the major driving forces in the process of globalization. This paper focuses on some lexicon changes over the last two decades. In particular, affixation, compounding, blending, and meaning shift are illustrated in detail.展开更多
Languages embody a lot of words that are considered as synonyms, and people just take it for granted that such words are identical in meaning without any discrimination. However, a corpus-based approach to the study o...Languages embody a lot of words that are considered as synonyms, and people just take it for granted that such words are identical in meaning without any discrimination. However, a corpus-based approach to the study of the collocational behavior of the two frequently-used pairs of synonyms （selection and option, ill and sick） reveals significant discrepancies in the use of these two pairs of synonyms by Chinese English learners and native speakers. According to the analysis, the major problems lie in the current ways of vocabulary teaching and learning. This paper aims to highlight the important role of the corpus-based collocational research in English vocabulary teaching and learning. In the end, some suggestions concerning vocabulary teaching and leaming are put forward on the basis of corpus-based research.展开更多
Semantic lexical chains have been regarded as important in textural cohesion, although traditionally, the classification of these chains has been limited to repetition, synonymy, hyponymy, and collocates. The cases of...Semantic lexical chains have been regarded as important in textural cohesion, although traditionally, the classification of these chains has been limited to repetition, synonymy, hyponymy, and collocates. The cases of automatic extraction of lexical chains have found that the contextual synonyms can not be recognized, nor extracted automatically. This study took the data-based technology to extract the contextually co-occurring lexical chains through thematic lexical items. It found that these contextually co-occurring lexical chains can include the semantic lexical chains and contextual synonyms. It also found that, in extraction of collocates of the co-occurring lexical items, these collocates form secondary lexical chains, which contribute to textual cohesion. The vertical lexical chains made of contextually cooccurring lexical items and the horizontal chains made of collocational lexical items work together in making the text into a coherent whole.展开更多
This study investigates the development of lexical semantic autonomy by a semantic relatedness test on the part of 200 English majors from Year one through Year four in a university in Shandong Province. Despite the o...This study investigates the development of lexical semantic autonomy by a semantic relatedness test on the part of 200 English majors from Year one through Year four in a university in Shandong Province. Despite the obvious development of their receptive vocabulary size, the subjects at the four learning stages have not achieved the lexical semantic autonomy, confirming the view that L1 semantic involvement in L2 word processing is a long and constant state of L2 lexical development. Explicit vocabulary teaching complemented by data-driven learning can be adopted to trigger the semantic restructuring, overcome semantic fossilization, and promote the development of lexical semantic autonomy in L2 vocabulary acquisition.展开更多
文摘This study investigates how orthographic,semantic and contextual variables—including word length,concreteness,and contextual support—impact on the processing and learning of new words in a second language(L2)when first encountered during reading.Students learning English as a foreign language(EFL)were recruited to read sentences for comprehension,embedded with unfamiliar L2 words that occurred once.Immediately after this,they received a form recognition test,a meaning recall test,and a meaning recognition test.Eye-movement data showed significant effects of word length on both early and late processing of novel words,along with effects of concreteness only on late-processing eye-tracking measures.Informative contexts were read slower than neutral contexts,yet contextual support did not show any direct influence on the processing of novel words.Interestingly,initial learning of abstract words was better than concrete words in terms of form and meaning recognition.Attentional processing of novel L2 words,operationalized by total reading time,positively predicted L2 learners’recognition of new orthographic forms.Taken together,these results suggest:1)orthographic,semantic and contextual factors play distinct roles for initial processing and learning of novel words;2)online processing of novel words contributes to L2 learners’initial knowledge of unfamiliar lexical items acquired from reading.
文摘Language change is the manner in which the phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other features of a language are modified over time. Vocabulary can change quickly as new words are borrowed from other languages, or as words get combined or shortened. Information and communication technologies （ICT） are one of the major driving forces in the process of globalization. This paper focuses on some lexicon changes over the last two decades. In particular, affixation, compounding, blending, and meaning shift are illustrated in detail.
文摘Languages embody a lot of words that are considered as synonyms, and people just take it for granted that such words are identical in meaning without any discrimination. However, a corpus-based approach to the study of the collocational behavior of the two frequently-used pairs of synonyms （selection and option, ill and sick） reveals significant discrepancies in the use of these two pairs of synonyms by Chinese English learners and native speakers. According to the analysis, the major problems lie in the current ways of vocabulary teaching and learning. This paper aims to highlight the important role of the corpus-based collocational research in English vocabulary teaching and learning. In the end, some suggestions concerning vocabulary teaching and leaming are put forward on the basis of corpus-based research.
文摘Semantic lexical chains have been regarded as important in textural cohesion, although traditionally, the classification of these chains has been limited to repetition, synonymy, hyponymy, and collocates. The cases of automatic extraction of lexical chains have found that the contextual synonyms can not be recognized, nor extracted automatically. This study took the data-based technology to extract the contextually co-occurring lexical chains through thematic lexical items. It found that these contextually co-occurring lexical chains can include the semantic lexical chains and contextual synonyms. It also found that, in extraction of collocates of the co-occurring lexical items, these collocates form secondary lexical chains, which contribute to textual cohesion. The vertical lexical chains made of contextually cooccurring lexical items and the horizontal chains made of collocational lexical items work together in making the text into a coherent whole.
基金the Foundation of Humanities and Social Science by the Chinese Ministry of Education(Grant no.10YJC40018)the Social Science Foundation of Shandong Province(Grant no.09CWXZ17)
文摘This study investigates the development of lexical semantic autonomy by a semantic relatedness test on the part of 200 English majors from Year one through Year four in a university in Shandong Province. Despite the obvious development of their receptive vocabulary size, the subjects at the four learning stages have not achieved the lexical semantic autonomy, confirming the view that L1 semantic involvement in L2 word processing is a long and constant state of L2 lexical development. Explicit vocabulary teaching complemented by data-driven learning can be adopted to trigger the semantic restructuring, overcome semantic fossilization, and promote the development of lexical semantic autonomy in L2 vocabulary acquisition.
