The Effect of Syllable Structure on EFL Learners’ Word-Blending
[1]
Yuanfei Chen, School of International Studies, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, China.
[2]
Hongwei Zhan, School of International Studies, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, China.
Blending is an important device of word formation. Blended words (blends) are widely used nowadays. However, new blends are not formed haphazardly and arbitrarily. Instead, the formation of new blends is influenced by a number of factors, including language proficiency, phonological awareness, and the syllable structure of source words, among others. It remains a question about how L2 learners come up with new blends. This paper aims to investigate the effect of syllable structure on word-blending, through a questionnaire survey EFL learners’ phonological awareness. The quantitative results of the blending accuracy identify three factors that influence learners’ word-blending: i) the learning length of the students; ii) the recognizability degree of the source words; iii) the complexity of the source words’ syllable structure.
Syllable Structure, Blending, EFL, Word Formation
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