Word-superiority effect as a function of semantic transparency of Chinese bimorphemic compound words

Visual event-related potentials reveal the early whole-word lexical processing of Chinese two-character words

Morphologically complex words are common across different languages, especially in Chinese, because more than 90% of common modern Chinese words are complex words. Many behavioral studies have suggested the whole-word processing of Chinese complex words, but the neural correlates of whole-word processing remain unclear. Previous electrophysiological studies revealed automatic and early (∼250 ms) access to the orthographic forms of monomorphic words in the ventral occipitotemporal area. In this study, we investigated whether there is also automatic and early orthographic recognition of Chinese complex words (as whole units) by recording event-related potentials (ERPs). A total of 150 two-character words and 150 two-character pseudowords composed of the same 300 characters (morphemes) were pseudorandomly presented to proficient Chinese readers. Participants were required to determine the color of each stimulus in the color decision task and to determine whether each stimulus was a word in the lexical decision task. The two constituent characters of each stimulus were horizontally arranged in Experiment 1 and vertically arranged in Experiment 2. The results revealed a significant early ERP difference between words and pseudowords approximately 250-300 ms after stimulus onset in the parieto-occipital scalp region. The early ERP difference was more prominent in the color decision task than in the lexical decision task, more prominent in Experiment 1 than in Experiment 2, and more prominent in the left parieto-occipital scalp region than in the right. Source analysis results showed that the early ERP difference originated from the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex. These results reflected early and automatic access to whole-word orthographic representations of Chinese complex words in the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex.

Effects of Word Semantic Transparency, Context Length, and L1 Background on CSL Learners' Incidental Learning of Word Meanings in Passage-Level Reading

This study investigated the effects of semantic transparency of Chinese disyllabic compound words on Chinese as a second language (CSL) learners' incidental learning of word meanings in sentence-level reading and passage-level reading. The accuracy of the learners' lexical inferencing was compared among various types of words (transparent, semi-transparent, and opaque words), different context lengths (sentence and passage contexts), and learners with different L1 backgrounds (with and without a Chinese character background in their L1s). In the study, ninety CSL adult learners were asked to infer the meanings of target words in the sentence context and the passage context. The results indicated that the effects of semantic transparency and context length on inferencing accuracy were significant, while the effect of L1 background was not. It was also found that there were significant interactions between transparency and context length as well as between transparency and L1 background.

Psycholinguistic norms for a set of 506 French compound words

Compounds are morphologically complex words made of different linguistic parts. They are very prevalent in a number of languages such as French. Different psycholinguistic characteristics of compounds have been used in certain studies to investigate the mechanisms involved in compound processing (see Table 7). We provide psycholinguistic norms for a set of 506 French compound words. The words were normed on seven characteristics: lexeme meaning dominance, semantic transparency, sensory experience, conceptual familiarity, imageability, age of acquisition (AoA) and subjective frequency. Reliability measures were computed for the collected norms. Descriptive statistical analyses, and correlational and multiple regression analyses were performed. We also report some comparisons made between our normative data and certain norms obtained in other similar studies. The entire set of norms, which will be very useful to researchers investigating the processing of compounds, is available as Supplemental Material.

Word Learning in L2 Chinese: from Perspectives of Learner-Related and Language-Related Factors

Word learning in a second language (L2) is a complex process, which is affected by learner-related (e.g., morphological awareness) and language-related (e.g., word semantic transparency) factors. Morphological awareness is learners' sensitivity to the morphological structure of printed words, and semantic transparency is the degree to which word-internal morphemes contribute to the whole words' meanings. However, little is known regarding how these morpheme-related factors jointly function in L2 word learning. Thus, this study focuses on how learners' morphological awareness and word semantic transparency affect word-meaning retention in L2 Chinese, particularly the extent to which semantic transparency shapes the contribution of learners' morphological awareness. Thirty-four L2 Chinese learners from an American university participated in this study. All the participants received a 40-min learning session and five paper-pencil measures. The main findings showed that (1) L2 learners' morphological awareness contributed to their word-meaning retention beyond L2 linguistic knowledge; (2) L2 learners performed better when recalling semantically transparent words than opaque words after learning sessions; and more importantly (3) learners with higher morphological awareness performed better than those with lower morphological awareness when recalling semantically transparent words, but the learners in both groups had similar performances when recalling opaque words.

Inter-character Orthographic Similarity Effects on the Recognition of Chinese Coordinative Compound Words

Chinese coordinative compound words are common and unique in inter-character semantic and orthographic relationships. This study explored the inter-character orthographic similarity effects on the recognition of transparent two-morpheme coordinative compound words. Seventy-two native Chinese readers participated in a lexical decision task. The findings demonstrated robust inhibitory inter-character orthographic similarity effects, intra-word character reversal effects, and inter-character semantic similarity effects. These results were compared to those of previous studies on coordinative compound word recognition and on the orthographic similarity phenomenon at both character and word levels. The findings were explained with the multi-level representational model of morphological processing of Chinese compound words (Zhou and Marslen-Wilson in Psychologia 43:47-66, 2000). The model was further extended by adding the activation of morpho-orthographic relationships and the mapping of morphemic orthographic information onto the semantic information of both morphemes and whole words.

The role of lexical variables in the visual recognition of two-character Chinese compound words: A megastudy analysis

To examine the effect of lexical variables on two-character Chinese compound word processing, we performed item-level hierarchical regression analyses on lexical decision megastudy data of 18,983 two-character Chinese compound words. The first analysis determined the unique item-level variance explained by orthographic (frequency and stroke count), phonological (consistency, homophonic density), and semantic (transparency) variables. Both character and word variables were considered. Results showed that orthographic and semantic variables, respectively, accounted for more collective variance than phonological variables, suggesting that Chinese skilled readers rely more on orthographic and semantic information than phonological information when processing visually presented words. The second analysis tested interactive effects of lexical variables and showed significant semantic transparency × cumulative character frequency and word frequency × cumulative character frequency interactions. The effect of cumulative character frequency was stronger for transparent words than for opaque words and was stronger for low-frequency words than for high-frequency words. However, there was no semantic transparency × word frequency interaction in reaction time. Implications of the current findings on models of Chinese compound word processing are discussed.

A Developmental Study of Chinese Children's Word and Character Reading

To investigate the relationship between Chinese children's character and word reading, 62 third and 50 fifth grade children in Hong Kong were asked to read single characters and words that were comprised of these characters. Results showed that words helped children to recognize characters for both grades of children. Compared to older children, younger children's character reading was more likely to rely on the word that the character appeared in as a component; younger children made more errors in confusing the correct character with words related to it. Younger children's greater rate of meaning-related errors also underscored the role of the word in their character learning. This study confirmed the important role of words in children's character learning, and provided evidence for a developmental pattern of character and word reading in Chinese.

The Processing of Visual and Phonological Configurations of Chinese One- and Two-Character Words in a Priming Task of Semantic Categorization

To separate the contribution of phonological from that of visual-orthographic information in the recognition of a Chinese word that is composed of one or two Chinese characters, we conducted two experiments in a priming task of semantic categorization (PTSC), in which length (one- or two-character words), relation, prime (related or unrelated prime-target pairs), and SOA (47, 87, or 187 ms) were manipulated. The prime was similar to the target in meaning or in visual configuration in Experiment A and in meaning or in pronunciation in Experiment B. The results indicate that the two-character words were similar to the one-character words but were less demanding of cognitive resources than the one-character words in the processing of phonological, visual-orthographic, and semantic information. The phonological primes had a facilitating effect at the SOA of 47 ms but an inhibitory effect at the SOA of 187 ms on the participants' reaction times; the visual-orthographic primes only had an inhibitory influence on the participants' reaction times at the SOA of 187 ms. The visual configuration of a Chinese word of one or two Chinese characters has its own contribution in helping retrieve the word's meanings; similarly, the phonological configuration of a one- or two-character word plays its own role in triggering activations of the word's semantic representations.

Predicting raters' transparency judgments of English and Chinese morphological constituents using latent semantic analysis

The morphological constituents of English compounds (e.g., "butter" and "fly" for "butterfly") and two-character Chinese compounds may differ in meaning from the whole word. Subjective differences and ambiguity of transparency make judgments difficult, and a computational alternative based on a general model might be a way to average across subjective differences. In the present study, we propose two approaches based on latent semantic analysis (Landauer & Dumais in Psychological Review 104:211-240, 1997): Model 1 compares the semantic similarity between a compound word and each of its constituents, and Model 2 derives the dominant meaning of a constituent from a clustering analysis of morphological family members (e.g., "butterfingers" or "buttermilk" for "butter"). The proposed models successfully predicted participants' transparency ratings, and we recommend that experimenters use Model 1 for English compounds and Model 2 for Chinese compounds, on the basis of differences in raters' morphological processing in the different writing systems. The dominance of lexical meaning, semantic transparency, and the average similarity between all pairs within a morphological family are provided, and practical applications for future studies are discussed.