Open AccessA Probe Into Chinese University Students’ English Lexical Ambiguity
Author(s) -
Xiaochun Zhang
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
english language teaching
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1916-4750
pISSN - 1916-4742
DOI - 10.5539/elt.v12n10p55
Subject(s) - polysemy , psychology , priming (agriculture) , psycholinguistics , ambiguity , linguistics , perspective (graphical) , semantics (computer science) , meaning (existential) , natural language processing , artificial intelligence , cognition , computer science , philosophy , botany , germination , neuroscience , psychotherapist , biology , programming language
Disagreements arise on the differences of semantic processing of different ambiguous words in the perspective of psycholinguistics. This paper compares the differences of the semantic processing of different types of ambiguous words of Chinese English learners by using a multiple semantic priming experiment with short. The results demonstrate the advantage in semantic processing of words of homonymy of Chinese English Learners in the multiple semantic priming experiment, but the advantage in semantic processing of words of polysemy does not always take place, as it is relevant to learners’ English levels and words’ meaning frequency. The effect of semantic processing of polysemous words is greater than that of synonymous words.