School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdom.
Psychol Sci. 2011 Oct;22(10):1237-42. doi: 10.1177/0956797611421492. Epub 2011 Aug 31.
In this study, we investigated automatic translation from English to Chinese and subsequent morphological decomposition of translated Chinese compounds. In two lexical decision tasks, Chinese-English bilinguals responded to English target words that were preceded by masked unrelated primes presented for 59 ms. Unbeknownst to participants, the Chinese translations of the words in each critical pair consisted of a fully opaque compound word (i.e., a compound with two constituent morphemes that were semantically unrelated to the compound) and a monomorphemic word that was either the first or the second morpheme of the compound. The data revealed that bilinguals responded faster to English word pairs whose Chinese translations repeated the first morpheme than to English word pairs whose Chinese translations did not repeat the first morpheme, but no effect of hidden second-morpheme repetition was found. This effect of hidden first-morpheme repetition suggests that participants translated English words to Chinese and decomposed the translated compounds into their constituent morphemes. Because the primes were presented for only 59 ms, translation and morphological decomposition must be fast and automatic.
在这项研究中，我们调查了从英文到中文的自动翻译以及随后的翻译中文复合词的形态分解。在两个词汇判断任务中，中国-英语双语者对用 59 毫秒呈现的掩蔽无关启动词引导的英语目标词做出反应。参与者不知道的是，每个关键对中词的中文翻译由一个完全不透明的复合词（即，由两个语义上与复合词无关的构成语素组成的复合词）和一个单语素词组成，该单语素词是复合词的第一个或第二个语素。数据显示，对于中文翻译重复第一个语素的英语单词对，双语者的反应比中文翻译不重复第一个语素的英语单词对更快，但没有发现隐藏的第二个语素重复的影响。这种隐藏的第一个语素重复的影响表明，参与者将英语单词翻译为中文，并将翻译后的复合词分解为其组成的语素。由于提示只呈现 59 毫秒，因此翻译和形态分解必须快速且自动。
