Whole-Word Phonological Representations of Disyllabic Words in the Chinese Lexicon: Data From Acquired Dyslexia

Sam-Po Law,Karen M Y Chiu,Winsy Wong

doi:10.1155/2005/597581

Sam-Po Law, Karen M Y Chiu + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1155/2005/597581

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Journal: Behavioural neurology	Publication Date: Jan 1, 2005
Citations: 22	License type: CC BY 3.0

Affiliation: University of Hong Kong, Tung Wah Hospital

Abstract

This study addresses the issue of the existence of whole-word phonological representations of disyllabic and multisyllabic words in the Chinese mental lexicon. A Cantonese brain-injured dyslexic individual with semantic deficits, YKM, was assessed on his abilities to read aloud and to comprehend disyllabic words containing homographic heterophonous characters, the pronunciation of which can only be disambiguated in word context. Superior performance on reading to comprehension was found. YKM could produce the target phonological forms without understanding the words. The dissociation is taken as evidence for whole-word representations for these words at the phonological level. The claim is consistent with previous account for discrepancy of the frequencies of tonal errors between reading aloud and object naming in Cantonese reported of another case study of similar deficits. Theoretical arguments for whole-word form representations for all multisyllabic Chinese words are also discussed.

Highlights

In the past several decades, the recognition and production of multimorphemic words have attracted much attention in psycholinguistic research
The whole-word representation approach claims that multimorphemic words are stored as wholes
They show that his correct reading of characters with phonological forms that can solely be disambiguated in word contexts is independent of his comprehension of them

Summary

Introduction

In the past several decades, the recognition and production of multimorphemic words have attracted much attention in psycholinguistic research These observations inform us about their representations and the architecture of the mental lexicon. The whole-word representation approach claims that multimorphemic words are stored as wholes. They are the only units for lexical access, and they may or may not be marked morphologically Another type of models, illustrated by the Augmented Addressed Morphology (AAM) model, assumes that the lexicon contains both whole-word and morpheme units [1,3] The latter represent stems and affixes at the same level.

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