Bilingual representation of multi-word phrases: Evidence from phrase-acceptability judgment in Chinese-English bilinguals

We investigated whether bilinguals represent multi-word phrases (MWPs) in their second language (L2), and whether L2 MWPs are related to their translations in the first language (L1). Two experiments using phrase-acceptability judgment tasks showed that Chinese-English bilinguals judged L2 MWPs as acceptable faster and more accurately with increased phrase frequencies and Mutual Information scores. Importantly, their judgments were quicker and more accurate when MWPs had congruent than incongruent L1 translations, with the effect significant in Experiment 1 and showing a non-significant trend in Experiment 2. Furthermore, L2 phrase-level statistics (i.e., phrase frequency and Mutual Information) interacted with translation congruency, with effects occurring only for MWPs with congruent L1 translations but not for those with incongruent translations, supporting the existence of cross-language links at the multi-word level. As predicted, English monolinguals were affected only by phrase frequencies but not by translation congruency. We argue that bilinguals represent MWPs in their L2 and establish a cross-language link between L1 and L2 MWPs beyond the single word level.