Abstract
Over 70% of the more than 56,000 most frequently used words in simplified Chinese are two-character words (2C-words). The present study collected data on subtitle frequency, number of strokes, number of meanings, familiarity, concreteness, imageability, age of acquisition, subjective frequency, subjective number of meanings (sNOMs), compositionality, emotional experience rating, sensory experience rating (SER), and semantic transparency (ST) for 3,783 commonly used 2C-words. Correlative patterns were identified between the 13 variables, all of which, with the exception of imageability, SER, and sNOM, were significantly predictive of the changes in participants’ RTs in LDs on the target words. In conclusion, skilled readers’ awareness of 2C-words’ features such as concreteness, imageability, compositionality, sNOM, and ST is closely associated with their semantic perception of the constituent characters.
Highlights
We revealed a few new correlations between the normative features in comparison with previous studies: (a) semantic transparency (ST) is positively correlated with compositionality and concreteness but negatively correlated with age of acquisition (AOA) and subjective number of meanings (sNOMs); (b) subTF is positively correlated with experience rating (EER) but negatively correlated with AOA; (c) sensory experience rating (SER) is positively correlated with EER, compositionality, concreteness, and ST; (d) compositionality is negatively correlated with number of meanings (NOMs), and concreteness is negatively correlated with sNOM
The result showed that 10 features were significantly powerful in predicting changes in participants’ lexical decisions (LDs) reaction times (RTs) to the 2C-words (F(13, 3,772) = 181.320, p < .001, R2 = .325)
Using objective data obtained from dictionaries regarding subTF, number of strokes (NOSs), and NOM, as well as subjective data obtained by means of questionnaires concerning familiarity, concreteness, imageability, AOA, subjective frequency (sF), sNOM, compositionality, EER, SER, and ST, a normative description was provided for 3,783 2C-words in simplified Chinese
Summary
Normative descriptions of words or expressions are available in many languages, including Chinese (Chang et al, 2016), Dutch (Hubers et al, 2019), English (Juhasz et al, 2015), French (Bonin et al, 2015), German (Schulte Im Walde & Borgwaldt, 2015), Hebrew (Yael et al, 2015), Italian (Barca et al, 2002), Malay (Yap et al, 2010), Russian (Grigoriev & Oshhepkov, 2013), Spanish (Guasch et al, 2016), and Swedish (Blomberg & Öberg, 2015). The present study attempts to provide a normative description for 3,783 Chinese two-character words (2C-words). 72% and 22.3% of the 56,008 frequently used words (State Language Affairs Commission, 2008) are 2C-words and words of more than two Chinese characters, respectively
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