Chinese Logographs Research Articles

Cognitive Correlates of Reading Fluency in Chinese School-Aged Children.

Previous studies have showed that reading fluency is strongly associated with cognitive skills, including rapid automatized naming, phonological awareness, orthographical awareness, and so on. However, these studies are largely based on alphabetic languages, and it remains unclear which cognitive factors contribute to the development of reading fluency in logographic Chinese, a language in which the graphic forms map onto morphemes (meaning) rather than phonemes. In Study 1, we tested 179 Chinese children aged 6 to 9 on a set of cognitive tasks as well as for word reading accuracy and sentence reading fluency. The results showed that rapid naming, writing fluency, and phonological awareness significantly predicted reading fluency in both beginning and intermediate readers. In addition, while the contribution of rapid naming and writing fluency increased with grades, the effect of phonological awareness decreased. In Study 2, we examined the role of visual crowding in reading fluency in a subgroup of 86 children and found that visual crowding accounted for the unique variance of individual differences in reading fluency. The findings reflect both universal and language-specific cognitive correlates of reading fluency and provide important implications for potentially effective treatment for individuals suffering from Chinese reading disabilities, particularly in terms of reading fluency.

N170 Tuning in Chinese: Logographic Characters and Phonetic Pinyin Script

ABSTRACTIn alphabetic languages, print consistently elicits enhanced, left-lateralized N170 responses in the event-related potential compared to control stimuli. In the current study, we adopted a cross-linguistic design to investigate N170 tuning to logographic Chinese and to pinyin, an auxiliary phonetic system in Chinese. The results demonstrated that logographic characters elicit a left-lateralized print-tuning effect in Chinese readers only. Crucially, the observed tuning effect is clearly driven by script familiarity, rather than by differences in visual features between print and control stimuli. This can be concluded because Dutch participants who viewed the same set of stimuli showed a bilateral topography instead. For pinyin, the left-hemispheric modulation was absent in both language groups, presumably because long strings of pinyin are unfamiliar to both groups. Because grapheme-to-phoneme conversion does not exist in logographic Chinese, our results tend to suggest a visual familiarity rather than a grapheme-to-phoneme mapping account of the print N170.

Distinct representations of syllables and phonemes in Chinese production: Evidence from fMRI adaptation

Existing linguistic theories have converged on the fundamental role of syllable and phoneme as the phonological production units that drive articulation in most alphabetic languages, while much remains controversial concerning the logographic Chinese because there is no conclusive evidence of the neural correlates of syllabic and phonemic processing during Chinese speech production. Here, fMRI adaptation paradigm was used to explore the possibility of distinctive neural representations of phonemes and syllables when native Chinese speakers pronounced Chinese pseudowords. We found that bilateral basal ganglia (BG) exhibited evident neural adaptation effect for phonemic repetition, indicating independent neural representation of phonemes in the speech production network in Chinese speakers. Moreover, neural adaptation effect for syllabic repetition was found in bilateral superior temporal gyrus (STg). These findings thus suggest that, similar to alphabetic languages, both phonemes and syllables are phonological production units associated with distinctive neural representations in Mandarin Chinese and further implicate the universality of hierarchical phonological coding across different linguistic systems.

Limited role of phonology in reading Chinese two-character compounds: Evidence from an ERP study

This study investigates the role of phonology in reading logographic Chinese. Specifically, whether phonological information is obligatorily activated in reading Chinese two-character compounds was examined using the masked-priming paradigm with event-related potential (ERP) recordings. Twenty-two native Cantonese Chinese speakers participated in a lexical decision experiment. The targets were visually presented Chinese two-character strings and the participants were asked to judge whether the target in each trial was a legitimate compound word in Chinese. Each target was preceded by a briefly presented word prime. The prime and target shared an identical constituent character in the Character-related condition, a syllable in the Syllable-related condition, were semantically related in the Semantic-related condition, and were unrelated (both phonologically and semantically) in the control condition. The prime–target relationship was manipulated to probe the effects of word-form (i.e., character- or syllable-relatedness) and word-semantic relatedness on phonological (as indexed by an N250 ERP component) and semantic (as indexed by an N400 ERP component) processing. Significant and comparable facilitation effects in reaction time, relative to the control, were observed in the Character-related and the Semantic-related conditions. Furthermore, a significant reduction in ERP amplitudes (N250), relative to the control, was obtained in the Character-related condition in the time window of 150–250ms post target. In addition, attenuation in ERP amplitudes was found in the Semantic-related condition in the window of 250–500ms (N400). However, no significant results (neither behavioral nor ERP) were found in the Syllable-related condition. These results suggest that phonological activation is not mandatory and the role of phonology is minimal at best in reading Chinese two-character compounds.

Rapid Extraction of Lexical Tone Phonology in Chinese Characters: A Visual Mismatch Negativity Study

BackgroundIn alphabetic languages, emerging evidence from behavioral and neuroimaging studies shows the rapid and automatic activation of phonological information in visual word recognition. In the mapping from orthography to phonology, unlike most alphabetic languages in which there is a natural correspondence between the visual and phonological forms, in logographic Chinese, the mapping between visual and phonological forms is rather arbitrary and depends on learning and experience. The issue of whether the phonological information is rapidly and automatically extracted in Chinese characters by the brain has not yet been thoroughly addressed.Methodology/Principal FindingsWe continuously presented Chinese characters differing in orthography and meaning to adult native Mandarin Chinese speakers to construct a constant varying visual stream. In the stream, most stimuli were homophones of Chinese characters: The phonological features embedded in these visual characters were the same, including consonants, vowels and the lexical tone. Occasionally, the rule of phonology was randomly violated by characters whose phonological features differed in the lexical tone.Conclusions/SignificanceWe showed that the violation of the lexical tone phonology evoked an early, robust visual response, as revealed by whole-head electrical recordings of the visual mismatch negativity (vMMN), indicating the rapid extraction of phonological information embedded in Chinese characters. Source analysis revealed that the vMMN was involved in neural activations of the visual cortex, suggesting that the visual sensory memory is sensitive to phonological information embedded in visual words at an early processing stage.

Brain Areas Activated and Cognitive Approaches Adopted in L2 Phonological Process

Logographic Chinese and alphabetic English exhibit a sharp contrast in both phonology and orthography.Although about eighty-five percent of present-day Chinese characters are phonetic compounds containing a phonetic component that may give information about the pronunciation of the compound,estimates of the validity of this information reveal that only thirty-eight percent of phonetic components are helpful for the pronunciation of whole characters(Perfetti Tan,1999).However,the pronunciation of most English words is known largely predictable based upon grapheme-to-phoneme conventions.Given the huge difference,what is the cognitive and neural-anatomical mechanism when those bilinguals,whose native language is Chinese and who learn English as a second language(L2),are performing a phonological task on English words has attracted much attention in cognitive science.This paper was to find out the possible approaches adopted by those bilinguals in L2 phonological process and to locate the brain areas activated in the process as well. Twenty-nine Chinese post-graduates(13 females and 16 males;aged 23 to 24),who were late bilinguals presumably with high proficiency in English,participated in the experiment.They were asked to judge the rhymes of real-word pairs,which were of high frequency,regular grapheme-phoneme correspondence and high lexicality,and meanwhile,they were given some pronounceable pseudoword pairs and control-letter pairs(consonant-letter strings) to judge too.Functional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI) was employed to scan their brain areas activated in the process,and E-prime was used to record their behavioral performance.The fMRI experiment was done in 6 sessions,each of which contained 3 blocks respectively corresponding to rhyme decision of read-word pairs,pronounceable pseudoword pairs,and font size decision of control-letter pairs. The results obtained from behavioral measurement and fMRI analysis showed that these late bilinguals were at approximately the same speed in judging the real-word pairs and pseudoword pairs(MD=3.27;p=0.9320.05),but much faster in judging the control-letter pairs(MD=214.95;P0.01);that their brain areas activated in L2 phonological process involved the left dorsal lateral frontal system,the left ventral prefrontal system,the dorsal aspect of left inferior parietal system,and the bilateral ventral occipitotemporal system where the phonological process of their mother tongue works;and that the brain areas activated as a whole were strongly left-lateralized,but the areas in occipital lobe(Asymmetric Index:-0.10) and cerebellum(Asymmetric Index:-0.03) were slightly right-lateralized. In a word,the late proficient bilinguals were found to employ the same brain areas in phonological process for both their mother tongue and L2,and they appeared to be taking an assembled approach rather than an addressed approach to L2 phonological process.

Kansuke

We have developed a method that makes it easier for language novices to look up Japanese and Chinese logographs. Instead of using the arbitrary conventions of logographs, this method is based on three simple prototypes: horizontal, vertical, and other strokes. For example, the code for the logograph ⊞ ( ta , meaning rice field) is 3-3-0, indicating the logograph consists of three horizontal strokes and three vertical strokes. Such codes allow a novice to look up logographs even with no knowledge of the logographic conventions used by native speakers. To make the search easier, a complex logograph can be looked up via the components making up the logograph. We conducted a user evaluation of this system and found that novices could look up logographs with fewer failures with our system than with conventional methods.

Broca's area plays a role in syntactic processing during Chinese reading comprehension

Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (ER-fMRI) was adopted to examine brain activation of syntactic processing in reading logographic Chinese. While fMRI data were obtained, 15 readers of Chinese read individually presented sentences and performed semantic congruency judgments on three kinds of sentences: Congruous sentences (CON), sentences with a semantic violation (SEM), and sentences with both semantic and syntactic violations (SEM+SYN). The two types of incongruous sentences were matched in the degree of semantic plausibility. Three brain regions were identified showing significantly different levels of percent signal change across the three conditions, including BA44 in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and both BA9 and BA10/46 in the left middle frontal gyrus (MFG). Furthermore, the mean percent signal change in the left BA44 observed in the SEM+SYN condition was significantly stronger than that in either the SEM or the CON condition, while the latter two conditions were at a similar level, implying an important role of this area in Chinese syntactic processing. These results, in conjunction with those found in alphabetic scripts, suggest that there are some common neural substrates underlie syntactic processing across distinctive writing systems such as the logographic Chinese and the alphabetic English.

Acquired dysgraphia in Chinese: Further evidence on the links between phonology and orthography

Background: How similar is the "architecture" of language function in different languages? In the domain of reading and writing, the relationship between orthographic and phonological units of the language differs dramatically between alphabetic and logographic writing systems. It is therefore appropriate to ask whether an architecture assumption, such as direct links between word pronunciations and their written forms, developed in the course of research on English and other alphabetic writing systems, applies to logographic Chinese. Aims: We describe a native Cantonese speaker, TUA, with an acquired dysgraphia following a right hemisphere stroke. The study was designed to identify the conditions under which TUA succeeded or failed to produce the correct orthographic form of words in his native language, and thereby to draw inferences about his impaired and intact writing procedures with further implications for normal writing. Methods & Procedures: Nine different single-word tests were administered to TUA, mainly of writing to dictation but also of written picture naming and other relevant skills. Almost all monosyllabic words in Cantonese are homophones and, in the majority of our tests, the target words were lower-frequency homophones, with the intended alternative disambiguated by a semantic cue. Outcomes & Results: TUA made few errors in writing high-frequency words to dictation, but had error rates as high as 60-70% on lower-frequency homophonic target words. The majority of his errors were homophones of, or at least closely phonologically related to, the target item. This deficit in writing to dictation co-existed with adequate ability to define the correct lower-frequency homophonic alternative, and with the unusual pattern of more correct responses in written picture naming than in writing to dictation of the same target items. Although TUA's poor performance in writing was accompanied by several nonlinguistic impairments (e.g., in visual memory, sequencing, and visuo-constructional ability), his dysgraphia had a predominantly linguistic nature and did not invite an account in terms of these additional cognitive impairments. Conclusions: We propose that TUA had a disrupted ability to activate lower-frequency orthographic representations, especially under conditions of response competition from a higher-frequency written word with the same pronunciation. This pattern is compatible with a proposal of direct activation of orthography by phonology, at least for higher-frequency words, in Chinese.

Spatial Memory for Chinese and English

Reading Chinese logographs relies relatively more on visual cognitive processes than does reading alphabetic English words, whereas the latter relies relatively more on phonological cognitive processes. As a consequence of this differential involvement, memory for the spatial location of words learned scattered across a single display was hypothesized to be better for Chinese logographs than for alphabetic English words. This prediction was supported using native speakers and bilinguals. Experiment 1 found that relative to a picture control condition, the spatial location of Chinese logographs was better remembered than the spatial location of alphabetic English words. Experiment 2 replicated this result using nonsense words and abstract symbols. Experiment 3 found that script differences were specific to spatial memory and did not affect the free recall of words. The results suggest that writing systems, which are a core element of many cultures, can affect the representation of verbal information in memory.

A left-lateralized network for reading Chinese words: a 3 T fMRI study.

fMRI was used to investigate brain organization for reading in Chinese. Subjects were shown two-character Chinese words. A control task was used to eliminate the non-linguistic visual and motor confounds. Results show that naming of Chinese logographs is characterized by left-lateralized neuronal networks for the processing of orthographic, phonological, and semantic attributes. The orchestration of the middle frontal cortex, superior temporal cortex, superior parietal cortex, basal temporal area and extrastriate cortices of the left hemisphere may manifest the particularity of the central representation of simple word naming in Chinese.

The development of phonological awareness: effects of spoken language experience and orthography

Phonological awareness, the ability to analyze spoken language into small sound units, has been shown to be affected by the individual's early orthographic experience (alphabetic vs. non-alphabetic). Past studies, however, have not differentiated the effect of script alphabeticity from that of spoken language experience, which covaries strongly with the phonological properties of the language. The present study compares younger, pre-reading to older, literate children from different linguistic backgrounds on their phonological awareness. Hong Kong and Guangzhou subjects both spoke Cantonese. The latter subjects had early experience with Pinyin (alphabetic) in addition to their logographic Chinese reading; the former read only logographic Chinese. New Zealand subjects spoke English and read the Roman alphabet. Results showed that: (1) the Hong Kong and Guangzhou pre-readers performed very similarly at all levels of phonological awareness; (2) the New Zealand pre-readers outperformed their Hong Kong and Guangzhou counterparts on onset, rime, and coda analyses; (3) the Guangzhou reading children outperformed their Hong Kong counterparts on onset and coda analyses. Whereas finding (3) reflects an effect of alphabeticity in the first learned script, finding (2) in combination with finding (1) indicates an effect of early spoken language experience independent of orthography. The fact that orthographic and spoken language experience both impact on the development of phonological skills implies a mediating function of phonological awareness in integrating sound information derived from reading and perceiving speech.

An fMRI study with written Chinese.

Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (ER-fMRI) was used to investigate how the human brain processes phonology and transforms a word's visual form (orthography) into phonological form during reading in logographic Chinese, a writing system that differs markedly from alphabetic languages. We found that reading aloud of irregular words produced larger MR signal intensity changes over extensive regions involving left infero-middle frontal cortex, left motor cortex, right infero-frontal gyri, bilateral anterior superior temporal areas, and anterior cingulate cortex. Right superior parietal lobule, the cuneus in bilateral visual cortex, and thalamus participated in the processing of irregular, but not regular, words. These findings were discussed in comparison to neuroimaging findings from alphabetic languages, as well as in relation to models of reading.

The long-term modality effect: In search of differences in processing logographs and alphabetic words

The visual superiority effect (a reverse long-term modality effect) has been consistently found with Chinese logographs. For its explanation in terms of script differences, it has been believed that lexical access is more direct or quicker for Chinese logographs than for alphabetic words. It has also been believed that Chinese logographs are more unique in shape or more discriminable than alphabetic words. Finally, Chinese logographs have been considered to facilitate recall through their graphic features that classify Chinese words into categories. The results of Experiments 1–5 show that these three assumptions can be ruled out. The results of Experiments 6–10, on the other hand, support the long-term priming interpretation of the visual superiority affect which explains (a) why the visual superiority effect can be consistently obtained for recall of Chinese words by Chinese subjects, (b) why the effect cannot be consistently obtained for recall of English words by Western subjects, (c) why the effect can be also obtained for recall of English words by Chinese subjects, (d) why the effect can be easily obtained for recall of a set of words, but not for recall of a different set of words by Chinese subjects, and (e) why the effect can be easily obtained from Chinese subjects speaking a dialect that is different from Mandarin.

Whence the Pronunciation of Taoism?

Whence the Pronunciation of Taoism? Michael Carr J. he object ofthis paper is to analyze Taoüm's [tauizam] cacology from Chinese source to English consequence.1 The first section introduces linguistic aspects of Chinese dào 'way' and dáo 'lead the way'. Section 2 discusses difficulties in romanizing the unvoiced unaspirated l%l phoneme in Chinese dào [tau] 'way'. The third looks at the Chinese DaolTao loanword and the English Daoüm/Taoüm calque. Section 4 compares pronunciation glosses ofTaoüm from principal British and American dictionaries. The fifth advances some general lexicographical suggestions about Chinese borrowings. (Modern Standard Chinese [MSC], not "Mandarin" (see n. 4), is transcribed in the Pinyin system. Old and Middle Chinese forms [OC and MC]— from ca. the 7th century B.C. and 7th century A.D.—are reconstructed by Karlgren, except where otherwise noted in section 1 .) 1. Chinese Dào This section outlines the semantics, graphics, and pronunciations of Chinese dào ] [ romanization of the unvoiced unaspirated Chinese ItI in dào [tau]. None of the rival transcription systems used in the past four centuries is completely satisfactory, owing to the political and linguistic confusion (see Gardner, Lo, Bortone, Zheng, and Chen). Chinese 'way; the Way; lead the way' was first romanized in 1736 as Tau (see section 3). It is best known as tao in the Wade-Giles and variant sys- Whence the Pronunciation of Taoism?59 terns, but has other transcriptions of J7JJ daw, dàu, and dào. In 1867, Thomas Wade proposed an "international" romanization for Chinese, but it was not long before French and German sinologists devised competing systems. Ever since Herbert Giles modified Wade's system in his 1892 dictionary, the Wade-Giles scheme for romanizing Chinese has been the most widely used in the Western world. Wade-Giles tao (or tao4) was adapted into variant schemes, including those of S. W. Williams, Post and Telegraphic, and China Inland Mission. In systems developed in China during the early part of this century, the 'way' was transcribed as National Romanization daw and Latinization tao. The 1913 Zhuyin Zimu 'National Phonetic Alphabet' alternately uses roman letters or 39 symbols based on Chinese logographs (and resembling Japanese katakana). The 1928 Guoyu Romaji 'National Romanization' system (Simon) has the advantage of alphabetically transcribing both phonemes and tones (e.g., Pinyin dào, dào, dào, and dào are written dau, daur, dao, and daw). The 1923 Ladinghua 'Latinization' system employs some Cyrillic characters, and has been weakly promoted in China. None of these three Chinese systems has been widely used in the West. Western sinologists, missionaries, and pedagogues have devised numerous schemes for romanizing Chinese. Most are variations of existing systems; for instance, Joseph Needham uses (cf. IPA [h] to replace the Wade-Giles indicating aspiration. In the 1943 Yale system, which was developed for teaching Chinese as a foreign language , but has little application outside of textbooks, the 'way' word is transcribed dàu. Pinyin is the new standard romanization system of Chinese. Movements within the People's Republic ofChina for logographic and linguistic standardization (DeFrancis, Cheng) led to the development of the Pinyin Zimu 'Phonetic Alphabet' which was based on the National Romanization and Latinization systems. After being officially adopted in 1962, Pinyin has become increasingly used worldwide. There are two arbitrary ways of representing in English the MSC opposition between aspirated vs. unaspirated stops and affricates : introducing a symbol for aspiration (non-phonemically distinctive in English), or utilizing the English opposition between voiced versus unvoiced (non-distinctive in MSC). Wade-Giles uses the former, transcribing [tau] 'way' as tao4 and [thau] 'peach' as t'ao2; Pinyin uses the latter, transcribing them as dào and táo. The causa causans of the pronunciation of Taoüm with [t] is the Wade-Giles system, which employs apostrophes to indicate aspiration; 60Michael Carr unvoiced aspirated marked p' = [ph], t' = [th], and k' = [kh] contrasting with unaspirated unmarked p = [p], t = [t], and k = [k]. This ['] usage derives from the Greek "breathing" diacritic superscripts of ['] to indicate aspirated "rough breathing" on an initial vowel versus ['] to indicate unaspirated "smooth breathing" (Trager 404). In criticism of...

Stroop interference: Hemispheric difference in Chinese speakers

Some recent studies have demonstrated that the processing of color is favored by the nondominant hemisphere in English-speaking subjects. Single Chinese logographs in Japanese- as well as Chinese-speaking subjects are similarly favored. In the present study, it was hypothesized that more Stroop interference would occur in the nondominant hemisphere because the two processes involved in the Stroop effect (i.e., reading logographs and naming colors) are possibly localized in that hemisphere in Chinese-speaking subjects. Eighteen right-handed Chinese-English bilinguals were used as subjects. There were three conditions in each visual field: Interference, reading, and naming. Each slide was presented for 150 msec preceded by a fixation dot. Subjects were asked to verbally report as fast and as accurately as possible either the color words or the color names, depending upon the condition. Reaction times and error rates were analyzed. As expected, more Stroop interference was obtained when color words were presented in the left visual field. This result is in direct contrast with that of Y-C. Tsao, T. Feustel, and C. Soseos 1979, Brain and Language, 8, 367–371. In that study, more Stroop interference was obtained when the materials were presented in the right visual field in English-speaking subjects.

NOTES ON THE LHASA DIALECT OF THE EARLY NINTH CENTURY

The tasks of philology are often greatly complicated, when working with materials from the East and Far East, by the complex nature of many of the scripts there employed; especially is this so in the Chinese field, where our philological materials are recorded by means of the morphemic symbolisation system known as the Chinese logograph (vulgo: ideographs, characters). Tibet, however, was fortunate enough to come to look toward India rather than toward China, in so far as its writing system is concerned, and has hence, since the beginnings of its literacy, employed a script based upon an Indic prototype. This has of course been an enormous boon to comparative philology in this area, and indeed, phonetic records of the degree of precision and antiquity which we may safely attribute to those of Written (the so-called 'Classical') Tibetan would be treasured in any branch of comparative philology. The researches of Karlgren and Maspero have, however, made the phonetic interpretation of records in Chinese logographs a less formidable task than it once was; give or take a few points of detail, we may now with considerable confidence use their reconstruction as the basis for phonetic conclusions concerning a logographic text. It has long been generally known that after the Tibetan language was committed to writing, sweeping phonetic changes took place, at least in the central and south-central dialect areas, while the border dialects, those on the east and west, appear to have escaped these changes to a surprising extent; these last, even today, retain a phonetic aspect strikingly like the language preserved for us by the orthography. The present notes are concerned with the problem of how early it can be shown that this change in the central dialects took place, and with the problem of the exact description of these early changes. The Chinese-Tibetan bilingual inscription of 822 A.D. provides all but unique materials for the study of the metropolitan dialect of Tibetan