Abstract：Abstract: Employing the overt priming paradigm (SOA=100ms), this study explored the influence of semantic transparency on Chinese learners’ processing of English derived words. Significant priming effects were discovered when the stems were primed by their derived words, either the derived words were semantically transparent or opaque. However, the priming effects were significantly lower when the derived words were semantically opaque than transparent. These results indicate that L2 processing of derived words is influenced by their semantic transparency. Under this influence, the semantically transparent words are processed via the decompositional route, while the semantically opaque ones are processed via the whole-word route. This study argues that, the processing routes of the derived words are determined by their mental representations, which result from different ways of acquisition.
