Effects of word and character frequencies on Chinese character writing
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1
Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, Hong Kong, SAR China
Background
The Chinese writing system is characterised by its opaque relations between phonology and orthography. The opaque relations can be observed in both the orthography-to-phonology and the phonology-to-orthography measures. In general, there exist Chinese characters with multiple pronunciations and also syllables with a lot of homophones. To distinguish among homophonic heterographic characters, it is a common practice among Chinese people to refer to word contexts where the target characters usually occur in as the clues. For example, to distinguish the target character 月 /jyut6/ [moon] from the other homophonic heterographs, such as 悅[delighted], 越[over] and 穴[cave], a word context will usually be specified, e.g. 「月餅」個「月」[The “moon” in “mooncake”]. Therefore, it is a common practice in Chinese character writing-to-dictation task to provide word contexts in the stimuli to avoid confusion. Given this specific characteristic of the Chinese writing system, the current study explored how orthographic form retrieval may be affected by character factors and/or word factors.
Method
Participants. A total of 20 participants (gender balanced, average age = 54years) were recruited.
Stimuli. A total of 96 Chinese characters and 96 word contexts that contain the target characters selected in a 2 (Character Frequency) X 2 (Word Frequency) construct were prepared.
Task. A writing-to-dictation task was used. The participants were tested in a quiet room individually. In each trial, each participant was instructed to write the randomized target character on a 7-inch Quad-core tablet with 2.20 GHz processing speed and resolution of 1820x1200 and a refresh rate of 60 Hz.
Measures. Both accuracy and latency data, measured as the duration between the onset of the target syllable in each verbal stimuli and the onset of the first stroke written by the participant, were obtained.
Results
Results of two way ANOVA on the accuracy data revealed only significant main effect of Word Frequency (p<.001) in both by-subject and by-item analyses. Identical results were obtained from the latency data. More accurate and faster performances on characters with high frequency word contexts provided were obtained.
Discussion
The significant Word Frequency effect observed is consistent with the predictions that Chinese people rely heavily on word contexts to distinguish among homophonic heterographs in writing and is consistent with the findings of previous studies of lexical processing using reading tasks (e.g. Chu & Leung, 2005; Tan & Perfetti, 1999). The insignificant character frequency effect, on the other hand, tells a different story from the findings in previous studies using reading tasks. The discrepancy probably suggests that the Chinese reading and writing processes are different. The results of the current study inclined more to a holistic storage of words in the orthographic output lexicon in Chinese. Results of error analyses, currently in progress, should help to verify this. Theoretical implications on lexical processing in reading and writing Chinese will be discussed.
References
Chu, M. K., & Leung, M. T. (2005). Reading strategy of Hong Kong school-aged children: The development of word-level and character-level processing. Applied Linguistics, 26, 505-520
Tan, L.-H., & Perfetti, C.A. (1999). Phonological activation in visual identification of Chinese two-character words. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 25, 382-393
Keywords:
Chinese,
Lexical Processing,
Writing,
word frequency effect,
Chinese writing
Conference:
Academy of Aphasia 55th Annual Meeting , Baltimore, United States, 5 Nov - 7 Nov, 2017.
Presentation Type:
poster presentation
Topic:
Consider for student award
Citation:
Chung
D and
Lau
D
(2019). Effects of word and character frequencies on Chinese character writing.
Conference Abstract:
Academy of Aphasia 55th Annual Meeting .
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2017.223.00054
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Received:
21 Apr 2017;
Published Online:
25 Jan 2019.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Dustin Kai-Yan Lau, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, Hong Kong, Nil, Nil, Hong Kong, SAR China, dustin.lau@polyu.edu.hk