On the segmentation of Chinese incremental words.

Abstract

In the present article, we report two eye-tracking experiments on how Chinese readers segment incremental words while reading Chinese. Incremental words are multicharacter words containing a subset of characters that constitute another word (referred to as the embedded word). For example, in a word containing three characters ABC (e.g., "老板娘," meaning landlady), the first two characters AB ("老板," meaning boss) constitute an embedded word. In the two experiments, Chinese readers read sentences with 3-character incremental words. In Experiment 1, the incremental words were always plausible, and the verbs prior to the target words were manipulated so that the embedded word of the incremental word was either plausible or implausible as an independent word. The eye-movement data showed that the plausibility manipulation did not influence the reading times on the incremental words nor their embedded words. In Experiment 2, we manipulated the plausibility of both incremental and embedded words. No plausibility effect of the embedded word was observed when the incremental words were plausible. However, the plausibility effect of the embedded word was obtained when the incremental words were implausible. These results suggest that Chinese readers tend to segment and integrate incremental words as a whole unit when they are plausible. However, when incremental words are implausible, the embedded words are segmented as independent words.

Mechanism of semantic processing of lexicalized and novel compound words: An eye movement study.

“…Furthermore, J. Zhou and Li (2021) replicated the findings of Yang et al (2012) using a similar paradigm to investigate whether three-character compound words are integrated into sentence context as a whole.…”

“…Zhou and Li (2021) replicated the findings of Yang et al (2012) using a similar paradigm to investigate whether three-character compound words are integrated into sentence context as a whole. In J. Zhou and Li (2021), the first two characters of the three-character compound words constitute another word, and these two-character words were target words in the two-character word condition.…”

Word complexity modulates the divided-word effect during Chinese reading

“…Finally, the word-superiority effect showed that character recognition is faster in real words than in nonwords (Chen et al, 2018). These studies suggest that words act as the basic processing units in Chinese reading (Zhou and Li, 2021;Li et al, 2022). When readers cannot simultaneously process all the characters belonging to a word, reading performance will be disturbed (Li et al, 2013).…”

The effect of transposed-character distance in Chinese reading.

“…Second, most set phrases are listed as words in Chinese dictionaries (Lexicon of Common Words in Contemporary Chinese Research Team, 2021, 7th edition). Finally, recent experimental studies have shown that idioms and set phrases in Chinese are processed as a whole, just as words (e.g., see Li & Ma, 2012; Li et al, 2009; Zang, 2019, Zang et al, 2021; Zhou & Li, 2021). For instance, Li et al (2009) asked Chinese readers to report as many characters as possible after they saw four briefly presented Chinese characters, participants could usually report all of the four characters when they belonged to a word, but they could only report the first two characters when the four characters belonged to two words.…”