Chinese characters and word recognition: An analysis and a model.

Abstract

Designations have been used very inconsistently in deciphering the nature of the Chinese writing system, ranging from pictographic, ideographic, logographic, to morphemic, phonosemantic, ideophonographic, and even to logosyllabic, word syllabic, morphosyllabic, etc. Implicit in the inconsistence is a set of hypotheses that Chinese is not a phonetic script, Chinese characters are represented in the right hemisphere and thus are processed in a picture-like fashion, and that recognizing Chinese characters does not involve phonological mediation, and so on. This thesis provides a thorough discussion of the linguistic structure underlying the organization of Chinese characters, and offers a perspective on the linguistic organization and the psycholinguistic processes involved in the recognition of Chinese characters. Misconceptions and fallacies concerning Chinese characters in both linguistic and cognitive areas are challenged and clarified. The thesis begins with a linguistic analysis of Chinese characters, focussing on the formal properties around which processing interpretations revolve. It then discusses issues of visual, hemispheric and cognitive processing of Chinese characters (e.g., how a Chinese character is visually detected? are Chinese characters represented in the right hemisphere? how are they processed in the two hemispheres? under what circumstances are Chinese characters visually accessed? and through what means if a Chinese character is to be phonologically coded? etc.). Lastly, an interactive model of Chinese character recognition is proposed. It is hoped that the groundwork may serve as the basis for proper experimental psycholinguistic research in future.