The Time Course Of English Word Production: Evidence From Non-proficient Chinese-english Bilinguals

English is regarded as the most international language of the world, whileChinese is the native language of the most populous country in the world. The formeris a kind of alphabetic writing and spelling language, while the latter is a kind ofgraphic language. Regardless of the language is alphabetic or graphic, they are all theintegration of orthographic, phonological and semantic section. But the alphabeticlanguage and the graphic language have some differences in writing structure andgrammar rules. The combination of the two, namely Chinese-English bilingual speechproduction, has become the focus of psycholinguistic experts.Based on the review and analysis on the time course of English vocabularyand previous studies, in our study we will use the picture-word interference paradigm and choose picture naming and category as the experimental task. Through comparing the effect which the different priming word type, different frequency, different SOA(Stimulus Onset Asynchrony), different experimental tasks has on unskilled Chinese-English bilinguals, we will reveal the time course, English vocabulary essential characteristic and unique processing mechanism of less proficient Chinese English bilinguals in the aspects of English vocabulary production and activation.The experimental results show that:1In the picture naming task of the first experiment, for the nonproficientChinese-English bilinguals, the activation time process of the English high-frequency words: orthographic—phonological--semantics. Low frequency words: phonological—orthographic--semantic.2In the picture categorization tasks, for the nonproficient Chinese-Englishbilinguals, the early activation process of the English high-frequency words: orthographic—phonological—semantics. Later activation process: the activation process of the low-frequency words has failed to separate the time of orthographic and phonological activation, but both of them are earlier than semantic activation.3For less proficient Chinese-English bilinguals, in the process of English word production, the phonological section does not necessarily get activated before semantic section got activated. Semantic access does not necessarily rely on the phonological intermediary. The semantic and phonological activation in the course of time overlap, and the conclusion of this study support the two stage interactive activation theory model.4For different priming word types, different SOA startup time and differentexperimental tasks, the phonological, orthographic and semantic activation willhave some difference and show different characteristics. Word frequency has si gnificant influence on the time course of the phonological, orthographic and semantic activation for the nonproficient Chinese-English bilinguals.The study focuses on activation process of phonological, orthographic and semantic section, for the less proficient Chinese-English bilinguals. This study willnot only can improve and complement of bilingual cognition and language production theory, but also provides theoretical basis of psychology and guidance forEnglish teaching and learning. So it has important theoretical value and practicalsignificance.