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/> 1.2 Purpose and need for the research
The present research is designed to contribute both theoretically and pedagogicallyto the practice of mental lexicon in the field of L2 reading comprehension.Theoretically, this research will provide empirical evidence to the difference aboutthe organization of L2 mental lexicon and the interactive effect between thedevelopment of L2 reading proficiency and the activation of learners' mental lexicon.The organizational pattern of L2 mental lexicon has been a dispute over a decade.Earlier studies support the view that the organization of L2 mental lexicon is differentfrom LI, which is mainly semantic. Later, the phonological view of L2 mental lexiconis challenged by other researchers such as Singleton, who published research data fromthe Modem Language Research Project (MLRP) to confirm his view of L2 mentallexicon organization which resembles a lot with that of LL Although more researchesfrom both theoretical camps have been carried out in the attempts to provide moreevidence on its side, the results are constantly contradictory. Therefore, a call for furtherempirical evidence is necessary. Through a thorough analysis of the associative patternof L2 mental lexicon according to a carefully designed word association test, thisresearch might shed new light on the dispute. Especially, this research focuses ondifferent organizational patterns of Chinese L2 learners at college level with variouslanguage proficiencies.Pedagogically, this research tries to demonstrate how lexicons are linked andretrieved in human brains，so that both learners and teachers could obtain initialknowledge about mental lexicon and contribute to the building of mental lexiconaccording to ML Theories. Teachers and learners might also give a new thought ondispense of the time and effort in a more effective way both in and outside classroom.

Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 Studies on Mental Lexicon
2.1.1 Definition of mental lexicon
As a subfield of psycholinguistics, the study of mental lexicon originated in thelate 1960s. By combining theories of linguistics and psychology，psycholinguistsexamine the mental processes of language acquisition，comprehension, and production.Mental lexicon is also called as subjective lexicon, internal lexicon, or mentaldictionary.Treisman (1960) first proposed the concept of mental lexicon in 1964. He definedthat mental lexicon is the storage of all the information that a person has related towords of a language. According to him, in every speaker's mind there is a lexicalrepresentation which is a well organized system consisting of word's spelling, soundand meaning.The study of mental lexicon has caused more and more concern within linguists,psychologists and anthropologists. Different definitions have been given by differentresearchers and scholars. J. C. Richards et al (2000) gives the definition of mentallexicon as a mental system that contains all the information one knows about wordswhich include pronunciation, patterns of grammar, and the meanings. According toAitchison (1994)，mental lexicon is also called mental dictionary, referring to therepresentation of words and their meanings stored permanently in one's memory. It iscomposed of two components: semantic-syntactic component is used to store wordmeaning and word class; phonetic-phonological component is used to store sound of aword.

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