Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL 61820, USA.
Brain Lang. 2011 May;117(2):77-87. doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2011.01.003. Epub 2011 Feb 24.
For Chinese compounds, neighbors can share either both orthographic forms and meanings, or orthographic forms only. In this study, central presentation and visual half-field (VF) presentation methods were used in conjunction with ERP measures to investigate how readers solve the sublexical semantic ambiguity of the first constituent character in reading a disyllabic compound. The sublexical ambiguity of the first character was manipulated while the orthographic neighborhood sizes of the first and second character (NS1, NS2) were controlled. Subjective rating of number of meanings corresponding to a character was used as an index of sublexical ambiguity. Results showed that low sublexical ambiguity words elicited a more negative N400 than high sublexical ambiguity words when words were centrally presented. Similar patterns were found when words were presented to the left VF. Interestingly, different patterns were observed for pseudowords. With left VF presentation, high sublexical ambiguity psudowords showed a more negative N400 than low sublexical ambiguity pseudowords. In contrast, with right VF presentation, low sublexical ambiguity pseudowords showed a more negative N400 than high sublexical ambiguity pseudowords. These findings indicate that a level of morphological representation between form and meaning needs to be established and refined in Chinese. In addition, hemispheric asymmetries in the use of word information in ambiguity resolution should be taken into account, even at sublexical level.
对于中文复合词，相邻的字符可以共享字形和语义，或者仅共享字形。在本研究中，我们结合使用了中心呈现和视觉半视野（VF）呈现方法以及 ERP 测量手段，来探究读者在阅读双字词时如何解决第一个字符的亚词汇语义歧义。我们通过控制第一个字符的亚词汇歧义程度和第一、第二个字符的字形邻近大小（NS1、NS2）来操纵第一个字符的亚词汇歧义。我们使用对一个字符所对应的语义数量的主观评分作为亚词汇歧义的指标。结果表明，当单词在中心呈现时，低亚词汇歧义单词比高亚词汇歧义单词诱发了更负的 N400。当单词呈现给左 VF 时，也发现了类似的模式。有趣的是，对于假词，观察到了不同的模式。对于左 VF 呈现，高亚词汇歧义的假词比低亚词汇歧义的假词诱发了更负的 N400。相比之下，对于右 VF 呈现，低亚词汇歧义的假词比高亚词汇歧义的假词诱发了更负的 N400。这些发现表明，在中文中需要建立和细化介于形式和语义之间的形态表示水平。此外，即使在亚词汇水平上，也应该考虑到在歧义解决中使用词信息的半球不对称性。
