Empirical Research on Prime Effects of Understanding of English Noun- noun Combination

The computer software for large- scale collection of latency data is employed to gather data of response time needed to interpret English noun- noun combinations and the concerning interpretations of these combinations. The research aims to find out what specific strategy advanced Chinese learners of English prefer in the interpretation of noun- noun combinations and it is intended to answer the following question: Is property mapping more difficult to occur than relation linking for advanced Chinese learners of English?SPSS 11. 5 is utilized to analyze valid raw data with descriptive and inferential methods. The finding indicates that the immediate past appearance of a property- mapping based noun- noun combination does not produce priming effect on the interpretation of property mapping,as is predicted by the CARIN theory; and the increased similarity between the two nouns in the combination does not bring in priming effect either.