Searching for meaning: effects of positional specificity and functional regularity of semantic radicals in reading Chinese

Abstract

PURPOSE: Most Chinese characters consist of semantic and phonetic radicals, and these radicals can stand alone and have their own meaning and sound, respectively. Moreover, these radicals exhibit positional and functional characteristics. For example, the compound character唱 /chang4/ (sing) consists of a semantic radical口 (mouth) on the left (indicating the semantic category of the compound character) and a phonetic radical 昌/chang1/ on the right (providing a clue to the sound of the compound character). An important unresolved question in Chinese reading is about how radicals -especially semantic radicals- are represented in a person's mental lexicon. In this study, we examined Chinese readers' processing of the position and function of radicals. METHOD: We asked 80 Chinese undergraduates to cross out the character-component 口while they were reading a 1000-word passage. The positional specificity (top, left, right, inside, bottom) and function (semantic radical or non-semantic radical) of the character-component 口were manipulated in the characters embedded the target character-component. RESULTS: When the target functioned as a semantic radical, participants were more likely to miss the target when it was on the right or at the bottom of the character. In contrast, when the target was a non-semantic radical participants are more likely to miss the target when it was on the left or at the top. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that the radial representation is constrained by both positional specificity and functional regularity. It seems that characters are processed on the basis of the orthographic information contained within them.