Multiregisters and four levels: A new tonal model
排除意义或发音媒介的汉字辨识
James Myers; Marcus Taft; Peiying Chou 周培瑛

Abstract 摘要
A long-running debate in Chinese psycholinguistics has concerned the relative roles of semantics and phonology in reading Chinese characters. Some researchers argue that character reading requires activation of phonological representations, while others maintain the traditional view that Chinese readers generally access meanings directly without phonological mediation. This paper describes an experiment that addresses this debate from a novel direction: Chinese readers were asked to report what they know about simple characters with unfamiliar meanings and/or pronunciations. The "phonology-first" view predicts that it should be impossible to know the meaning of a character without knowing its pronunciation, while the "semantics-first" view predicts that it should be impossible to know the pronunciation of a character without knowing its meaning. Our experiment showed that both situations can exist, though with quantitative and qualitative differences: knowing the pronunciation without knowing the meaning is a somewhat more common occurrence, though it arises most often with characters that share a phonological component with other characters, while knowing the meaning without the pronunciation most often occurs when readers have an alternative (nonstandard) pronunciation for the character or when the character is used as a quasi-linguistic symbol. Moreover, a signal detection analysis found no difference in sensitivity to meaning vs. pronunciation. At the same time, however, readers were strongly biased in their confidence judgments about phonology. Our results thus reaffirm support for a more nuanced position in the debate over Chinese reading, one where both phonology and semantics play key roles in reading.

在中文的心理语言学研究上，语意和语音在阅读中的相对角色一直是长久以来的争议。有些研究者认为阅读汉字时需要音韵表征的作用；而有些仍持传统看法，认为读者可以直接提取语意，不需要音韵作为媒介。本实验从一个创新的角度来探讨这个议题。我们请受试者报告他们对不熟悉意义或发音的独体汉字的了解。依照「音韵优先」的看法，知道意义而不知道发音是不可能的；依照「语意优先」的看法，则知道发音而不知道意义是不可能的。我们的实验结果显示这两种情况都可能存在，但有质与量的不同。知道发音而不知道意义是比较普遍的情形，通常发生在有同样声符的汉字；而知道意义却不知道发音的情形通常发生在当受试者认为该汉字还有其它发音，或此汉字实际上是代表某个字的符号，并不是真的语言。此外，在讯息侦测分析中，我们发现语意和发音在敏感度上并无不同。然而，受试者却对音韵判断有较强的信心。在中文阅读研究的争议中，我们的实验结果再度肯定这个更精细与周全的立场：音韵和语意两者都在阅读上扮演着关键的角色。

Subject Keywords 主题词

Characters 汉字　Writing systems 书写系统　Reading 读取　Phonology 音韵 Semantics 语义 Psycholinguistics 心理语言学

Article 文章

<< Back 返回

Readers 读者