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The morphosyntactic structure of compound words influences parafoveal processing in Chinese reading

The morphosyntactic structure of compound words influences parafoveal processing in Chinese reading
The morphosyntactic structure of compound words influences parafoveal processing in Chinese reading
In an eye movement experiment employing the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) we compared parafoveal preview benefit during the reading of Chinese sentences. The target word was a 2-character compound that had either a noun-noun or an adjective-noun structure each sharing an identical noun as the second character. The boundary was located between the two characters of the compound word. Prior to the eyes crossing the boundary the preview of the second character was presented either normally or was replaced by a pseudo-character. Previously, Juhasz, Inhoff and Rayner (2005) observed that inserting a space into a normally unspaced compound in English significantly disrupted processing and that this disruption was larger for adjective-noun compounds than for noun-noun compounds. This finding supports the hypothesis that, at least in English, for adjective-noun compounds, the noun is more important for lexical identification than the adjective, while for noun-noun compounds, both constituents are similar in importance for lexical identification. Our results indicate a similar division of the importance of compounds in reading in Chinese as the pseudo-character preview was more disruptive for the adjective-noun compounds than for the noun-noun compounds. These findings also indicate that parafoveal processing can be influenced by the morphosyntactic structure of the currently fixated character.
1747-0218
190-197
Drieghe, Denis
dfe41922-1cea-47f4-904b-26d5c9fe85ce
Cui, Lei
f6fc065d-b12e-4f07-9443-61aacf524fda
Yan, Guoli
e893614c-2061-4933-a295-8aa5f7f4f4b9
Bai, Xuejun
721d6175-84ba-435e-acfd-3d53ad941edd
Chi, Hui
e9390e84-03a1-4c3d-b445-f44230006879
Liversedge, Simon
3ebda3f3-d930-4f89-85d5-5654d8fe7dee
Drieghe, Denis
dfe41922-1cea-47f4-904b-26d5c9fe85ce
Cui, Lei
f6fc065d-b12e-4f07-9443-61aacf524fda
Yan, Guoli
e893614c-2061-4933-a295-8aa5f7f4f4b9
Bai, Xuejun
721d6175-84ba-435e-acfd-3d53ad941edd
Chi, Hui
e9390e84-03a1-4c3d-b445-f44230006879
Liversedge, Simon
3ebda3f3-d930-4f89-85d5-5654d8fe7dee

Drieghe, Denis, Cui, Lei, Yan, Guoli, Bai, Xuejun, Chi, Hui and Liversedge, Simon (2018) The morphosyntactic structure of compound words influences parafoveal processing in Chinese reading. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 71 (1), 190-197. (doi:10.1080/17470218.2017.1307426).

Record type: Article

Abstract

In an eye movement experiment employing the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) we compared parafoveal preview benefit during the reading of Chinese sentences. The target word was a 2-character compound that had either a noun-noun or an adjective-noun structure each sharing an identical noun as the second character. The boundary was located between the two characters of the compound word. Prior to the eyes crossing the boundary the preview of the second character was presented either normally or was replaced by a pseudo-character. Previously, Juhasz, Inhoff and Rayner (2005) observed that inserting a space into a normally unspaced compound in English significantly disrupted processing and that this disruption was larger for adjective-noun compounds than for noun-noun compounds. This finding supports the hypothesis that, at least in English, for adjective-noun compounds, the noun is more important for lexical identification than the adjective, while for noun-noun compounds, both constituents are similar in importance for lexical identification. Our results indicate a similar division of the importance of compounds in reading in Chinese as the pseudo-character preview was more disruptive for the adjective-noun compounds than for the noun-noun compounds. These findings also indicate that parafoveal processing can be influenced by the morphosyntactic structure of the currently fixated character.

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Drieghe, Cui et al. (in press).pdf - Accepted Manuscript
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Accepted/In Press date: 13 January 2017
e-pub ahead of print date: 15 March 2017
Published date: January 2018

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 404815
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/404815
ISSN: 1747-0218
PURE UUID: 4a057c0e-8c81-4f47-872d-c0ba102e8864
ORCID for Denis Drieghe: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-9630-8410

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Date deposited: 23 Jan 2017 16:46
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 04:01

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Contributors

Author: Denis Drieghe ORCID iD
Author: Lei Cui
Author: Guoli Yan
Author: Xuejun Bai
Author: Hui Chi
Author: Simon Liversedge

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