Abstract
The effects of word frequency (WF) and syllable frequency (SF) are well-established phenomena in domain such as spoken production in alphabetic languages. Chinese, as a non-alphabetic language, presents unique lexical and phonological properties in speech production. For example, the proximate unit of phonological encoding is syllable in Chinese but segments in Dutch, French or English. The present study investigated the effects of WF and SF, and their interaction in Chinese written and spoken production. Significant facilitatory WF and SF effects were observed in spoken as well as in written production. The SF effect in writing indicated that phonological properties (i.e., syllabic frequency) constrain orthographic output via a lexical route, at least, in Chinese written production. However, the SF effect over repetitions was divergent in both modalities: it was significant in the former two repetitions in spoken whereas it was significant in the second repetition only in written. Due to the fragility of the SF effect in writing, we suggest that the phonological influence in handwritten production is not mandatory and universal, and it is modulated by experimental manipulations. This provides evidence for the orthographic autonomy hypothesis, rather than the phonological mediation hypothesis. The absence of an interaction between WF and SF showed that the SF effect is independent of the WF effect in spoken and written output modalities. The implications of these results on written production models are discussed.
Highlights
Effects of word frequency (WF) and syllable frequency (SF) have been investigated systematically in the speech production domain, only a few of studies address similar issue in the written production of normal subjects (i.e., Bonin et al, 1998a; Bonin and Fayol, 2002)
The main findings of the two experiments are these: (1) SF and WF affect naming and writing latencies; (2) the SF effect is independent of WF in both output modalities; (3) the WF effect is attenuated with the repetition of the pictures but still persisted even after three repetitions in both output modalities
The magnitude of WF effect was larger in written output than in spoken output. (4) the SF effect disappeared in spoken output after two repetitions, while it was there in written response in the second repetition only
Summary
Effects of word frequency (WF) and syllable frequency (SF) have been investigated systematically in the speech production domain, only a few of studies address similar issue in the written production of normal subjects (i.e., Bonin et al, 1998a; Bonin and Fayol, 2002). Theoretical accounts claimed that the retrieval of an orthographic representation was entirely dependent on the prior retrieval of phonological codes, which is called the obligatory phonological mediation hypothesis Evidence supporting this view comes from the common introspective experience of how written codes are generated (Hotopf, 1980), and the phonologically mediated spelling errors such as homophone substitutions (e.g., there for their) or quasi-homophone substitutions (e.g., dirth for dearth) (Aitchison and Todd, 1982)
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