Based on the ERP technology and a lexical decision task,the present study investigates the time course of English compound word processing of Chinese EFL learners.ERP results show that(1)at the early stage of morpho-orthographic processing(150-300ms),the low-familiarity compound words elicit a larger P200 compared to the high-familiarity ones;(2)at the middle stage of morpho-semantic processing(300-500ms),the larger N400 amplitude is observed for the opaque compound words than the transparent ones,while the high-familiarity compound words elicit a larger N400 than the low-familiarity ones;(3)at the unique late stage of the interface between morpho-semantic and morpho-syntactic processing(500-700ms),the mean magnitude of LPC for the opaque compound words is larger than that of the transparent ones,while the high-familiarity compound words elicit a larger LPC than the low-familiarity ones.Based on these results,we conclude that aligning with the multi-route model,the compound word processing is the balance point between the efficiency of storage and the efficiency of calculation in light of different situations,and familiarity and semantic transparency of English compound words influence the time course of the processing to different degrees.
compound wordtime coursesemantic transparencyfamiliaritythe multi-route model
万方数据
维普
