Abstract
The Chinese writing system provides an excellent case for testing the contribution of segmental and suprasegmental information in reading words aloud within the same language. In logographic Chinese characters, neither segmental nor tonal information is explicitly represented, whereas in Pinyin, an alphabetic transcription of the character, both are explicitly represented. Two primed naming experiments were conducted in which the targets were always written characters. When logographic characters served as the primes (Experiment 1), syllable segmental and tonal information appeared to be represented and encoded as an integral unit which in turn facilitated target character naming. When Pinyin served as the primes (Experiment 2), the explicit phonetic representation facilitated encoding of both segmental and suprasegmental information, but with later access to suprasegmental information. In addition, Chinese speakers were faster to name characters than Pinyin in a simple naming task (Experiment 3), suggesting that Pinyin may be read via a phonological assembly route, whereas characters may be read via a lexical route. Taken together, our findings point to the need to consider the contributions of both segmental and suprasegmental information and the time course in the well-established models for reading aloud, as well as the cognitive mechanisms underlying the reading aloud of logographic characters versus alphabetic Pinyin script.
Highlights
The importance of phonological information in reading has been studied extensively in the literature
Chen et al showed that native Mandarin speakers benefited from the fore-knowledge of the initial syllable (S) but not the tone (T) when producing disyllabic response words, suggesting that segmental information plays a more important role than tonal information. These results were further replicated in a computer simulation study that showed faster picture naming in the S +T- condition and the absence of priming effect in the S-T+ condition [33]. These results suggest that the syllable is the proximate unit underlying phonological encoding in speech planning and production in Chinese [31] and tone may not be automatically encoded
Reading Pinyin led to greater activation in the brain areas responsible for phonological assembly, whereas reading characters led to greater activation in the areas responsible for visual-orthographic processing. Motivated by these differences in silent reading Pinyin versus characters, the current study investigated the phonological encoding of both segmental and tonal information in Pinyin as compared to characters when serving as primes in a character reading aloud task
Summary
The importance of phonological information in reading has been studied extensively in the literature. Broadly defined, encompasses both visual word recognition (silent reading) and reading aloud. The current study focused on phonological encoding and processing in reading aloud. Studies have shown that phonological information is activated in both visual word recognition and reading aloud in alphabetic writing systems [1,2]. There is no explicit representation of phonological information
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