Cross-Linguistic Conceptual Adaptation: Processing Structurally and Categorically Divergent Chinese–English Compounds

This study explores how bilinguals represent compound words that exhibit structural and conceptual divergence across languages. While previous research has focused on single-word translation equivalents, far less is known about the processing of morphologically complex forms, such as compound words, particularly when lexicalization patterns diverge across languages. Focusing on Chinese–English bilinguals, the study examines two types of translation-equivalent compounds: those with consistent syntactic structure but divergent head-category alignment, and those with schematic mismatches. Using a triadic similarity-rating task, two experiments assessed how monolingual and bilingual participants evaluated compound-image conceptual alignment. Monolinguals consistently favored language-congruent categories and schemas, while advanced Chinese-English learners showed more flexible patterns. Category-level mismatches elicited intermediate ratings, suggesting shifts in conceptual boundaries. In contrast, schematic mismatches led to dual alignment, reflecting sensitivity to morpheme position and functional structure. These findings suggest that bilinguals adapt to cross-linguistic inconsistency through conceptual adjustment and schematic negotiation. The degree and type of divergence modulate how lexical forms interface with conceptual categories, highlighting the need for bilingual lexical models to account for internal compound structure. This study extends current theories by demonstrating how structural variation across languages shapes bilingual conceptual representation, highlighting the need for lexical-semantic models to incorporate internal compound structure and cross-linguistic schematic divergence.