The role of phonology in processing English suffixed words by Chinese–English bilinguals

Abstract This study examined how phonology, specifically word stress, influences the masked processing of English-suffixed words by non-native speakers. The study included four prime types: TP+ (visualize-VISUAL), TP− (temptation-TEMPT), FP+ (example-EXAM), and FP− (entertain-ENTER). Primes in TP+ (semantically transparent and phonologically congruent) and FP+ (form and phonologically congruent) conditions matched their targets regarding primary stress, whereas primes in TP− (semantically transparent and phonologically incongruent) and FP− (form and phonologically incongruent) conditions exhibited phonological variations compared to their targets. Two groups of English-Chinese bilinguals with different levels of English proficiency (advanced vs lower-intermediate) participated in the study. The results indicated that advanced Chinese–English bilinguals exhibited significant priming effects across all conditions, with TP+ producing a stronger priming effect than TP− and FP+. In contrast, lower-intermediate Chinese–English bilinguals only displayed priming effects for two form-related conditions. Additionally, advanced Chinese–English bilinguals demonstrated more robust priming effects for TP+ than lower-intermediate bilinguals. These findings suggest that in bilingual masked morphological processing, phonological effects facilitate early visual word recognition, while morpho-semantic relationships and L2 proficiency moderate both morphological and phonological effects during early morphological decomposition. These findings challenge the localist view of morphology as a discrete unit in the mental lexicon and support the connectionist view of morphological representations being distributed across spelling, sound, and meaning.