O processamento de substantivos compostos em bilíngues português-inglês : um estudo de priming

Abstract

Many studies have investigated how speakers process compound nouns in their first language. However, few studies have investigated how bilinguals process the compounds in their second language. That said, the present study analyzed how Portuguese-English bilinguals, at an advanced or intermediate level, process transparent, partially opaque and opaque compound nouns in their second language. To do so, we used the priming technique as a methodological method, in which the target was a compound noun and the prime was one of its constituents: modifier or head. Our hypotheses were that transparent compounds would be processed faster, followed by partially opaque and opaque compounds, however, advanced bilinguals would process compounds faster compared to intermediates. In addition, we expected that the head of the compound, in relation to the modifier, would facilitate the processing of the phenomenon. Our findings were in the direction of our hypothesis that the transparent compounds were processed faster, followed by the partially opaque and opaque compounds by bilinguals. However, the groups showed different results: the advanced group showed priming effects, but, for the intermediates, there was no effect. The head, compared to the modifier, proved to be more influential in the processing of composites, at least for advanced bilinguals.