The effect of priming direction on reading Chinese compounds

This paper reports the first priming experiment on Chinese compounds to manipulate direction of priming, conducted in order to provide new data on the different stages, or at least aspects, of compound processing. The results parallel those found in other languages: first components prime compounds and second components do not, an effect that is also sensitive to semantic transparency, while compounds prime both of their components regardless of transparency. These results are consistent with a model in which compounds are accessed left-to-right, followed by a more thorough decomposition.

[1]  L. Feldman.  What the Repetition Priming Methodology Reveals about Morphological Aspects of Word Recognition , 2002 .

[2]  J. Rueckl,et al.  Equivalent Effects of Inflected and Derived Primes: Long-Term Morphological Priming in Fragment Completion and Lexical Decision ☆ ☆☆ , 2000 .

[3]  M. Taft,et al.  Submorphemic Processing in Reading Chinese , 2001 .

[4]  Jian Wang,et al.  Reading Chinese Script : A Cognitive Analysis , 1999 .

[5]  William D. Marslen-Wilson,et al.  Morphological Structure in the Chinese Mental Lexicon , 1995 .

[6]  Gary Libben,et al.  Processing Compounds: A Cross-Linguistic Study , 1999, Brain and Language.

[7]  W. Marslen-Wilson,et al.  Morphology and meaning in the English mental lexicon. , 1994 .

[8]  Laurie Beth Feldman,et al.  Does Prime Modality Influence Morphological Processing? , 2002, Brain and Language.

[9]  J. Packard.  The Morphology of Chinese: A Linguistic and Cognitive Approach , 2000 .

[10]  Pienie Zwitserlood,et al.  The role of semantic transparency in the processing and representation of Dutch compounds , 1994 .

[11]  A. Ralli,et al.  The Role of Morphological Structure in the Processing of Compounds: The Interface between Linguistics and Psycholinguistics , 1999, Brain and Language.

[12]  L. Feldman,et al.  Morphological Priming: The Role of Prime Duration, Semantic Transparency, and Affix Position , 1999, Brain and Language.

[13]  Dominiek Sandra,et al.  On the Representation and Processing of Compound Words: Automatic Access to Constituent Morphemes Does Not Occur , 1990 .

[14]  William D. Marslen-Wilson,et al.  Words, Morphemes, and Syllables in the Chinese Mental Lexicon. , 1994 .

[15]  Laurie Beth Feldman,et al.  Graded Aspects of Morphological Processing: Task and Processing Time , 2002, Brain and Language.

[16]  Laurie Beth Feldman,et al.  The role of orthographic and semantic transparency of the base morpheme in morphological processing , 1995 .

[17]  Marcus Taft,et al.  Morphology, Orthography, and Phonology in Reading Chinese Compound Words , 1999 .

[18]  Gary Libben,et al.  How is morphological decomposition achieved , 1994 .

[19]  S. Andrews.  Morphological influences on lexical access: Lexical or nonlexical effects? , 1986 .

[20]  San Duanmu,et al.  The Phonology of Standard Chinese , 2001 .

[21]  Gary Libben,et al.  Semantic Transparency in the Processing of Compounds: Consequences for Representation, Processing, and Impairment , 1998, Brain and Language.

[22]  Chu-Ren Huang,et al.  SINICA CORPUS : Design Methodology for Balanced Corpora , 1996, PACLIC.

[23]  Gary Libben,et al.  Compound fracture: The role of semantic transparency and morphological headedness , 2003, Brain and Language.