How to make L2 easier to process: The role of L2 proficiency and semantic category in translation Priming

摘要

The current study reports four masked translation priming experiments and demonstrates that L2 proficiency plays a role in translation priming but it is not the only factor determining translation priming patterns. Instead, language dominance might be more accurate in predicting priming patterns. Given the asymmetrical representations of L1 and L2 as described by most bilingual models, the conditions to produce L2-L1 priming not only depends on the task, but also the category size in semantic categorization. Relevant results will be discussed in relation to bilingual models. One implication of the current results is that processing L2 in a specific semantic context can be optimal to L2 lexical access.