Pub Date : 2016-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2015.1023176
Dris Soulaimani
This study discusses how scripts, or orthographies, are selected based on social and ideological factors rather than linguistic and scientific grounds. A Moroccan government committee was appointed in 2003 to determine whether Latin, Arabic or Tifinagh scripts should codify Amazigh/Berber. Tifinagh was officially selected, stirring debates between different groups with opposing views and complex affiliations. Informed by theories of language ideologies, this article examines the ideological motivations for the selection of Amazigh script, and investigates the social implications of Amazigh codification. This study shows that despite the official decision to support Tifinagh, the script issue is far from settled, given enduring questions of identity, political ideology and linguistic differentiation. The outcome of this study has implications for other communities facing similar decisions and competing script choices.
{"title":"Writing and rewriting Amazigh/Berber identity: Orthographies and language ideologies","authors":"Dris Soulaimani","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2015.1023176","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2015.1023176","url":null,"abstract":"This study discusses how scripts, or orthographies, are selected based on social and ideological factors rather than linguistic and scientific grounds. A Moroccan government committee was appointed in 2003 to determine whether Latin, Arabic or Tifinagh scripts should codify Amazigh/Berber. Tifinagh was officially selected, stirring debates between different groups with opposing views and complex affiliations. Informed by theories of language ideologies, this article examines the ideological motivations for the selection of Amazigh script, and investigates the social implications of Amazigh codification. This study shows that despite the official decision to support Tifinagh, the script issue is far from settled, given enduring questions of identity, political ideology and linguistic differentiation. The outcome of this study has implications for other communities facing similar decisions and competing script choices.","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"8 1","pages":"1 - 16"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2015.1023176","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60438164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2014.1003768
Amir Sadeghi, J. Everatt, Brigid C McNeill
This study investigated potential cognitive-linguistic predictors of reading comprehension levels of monolingual Persian-speaking children. Investigations into the Persian orthography are important since features of the orthography, such as the need to use text context to support decoding early in reading acquisition, may lead to skills developing differently from those predicted by current models of reading derived from English. Children (N = 199) in Iranian primary schools, Grades 2 to 5 (aged between 89 and 136 months), were given measures of text reading involving (1) cloze completion and (2) passages followed by comprehension questions. Performance on these measures was analysed in relation to children's language competence, phonological ability, orthographic processing and speed of processing. Analyses indicated that Persian reading comprehension levels were predicted by measures of language-related skills and decoding ability, with the latter being predicted by phonological and orthographic processing skills. The findings were consistent with the simple view of reading being applicable to Persian despite its varying transparency between letters and sounds, though modified to take account of specific associations between orthographic knowledge and reading comprehension. A working model of Persian reading comprehension is discussed based on these findings.
{"title":"A simple model of Persian reading","authors":"Amir Sadeghi, J. Everatt, Brigid C McNeill","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2014.1003768","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2014.1003768","url":null,"abstract":"This study investigated potential cognitive-linguistic predictors of reading comprehension levels of monolingual Persian-speaking children. Investigations into the Persian orthography are important since features of the orthography, such as the need to use text context to support decoding early in reading acquisition, may lead to skills developing differently from those predicted by current models of reading derived from English. Children (N = 199) in Iranian primary schools, Grades 2 to 5 (aged between 89 and 136 months), were given measures of text reading involving (1) cloze completion and (2) passages followed by comprehension questions. Performance on these measures was analysed in relation to children's language competence, phonological ability, orthographic processing and speed of processing. Analyses indicated that Persian reading comprehension levels were predicted by measures of language-related skills and decoding ability, with the latter being predicted by phonological and orthographic processing skills. The findings were consistent with the simple view of reading being applicable to Persian despite its varying transparency between letters and sounds, though modified to take account of specific associations between orthographic knowledge and reading comprehension. A working model of Persian reading comprehension is discussed based on these findings.","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"8 1","pages":"44 - 63"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2014.1003768","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60437725","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2015.1071235
P. Padakannaya, Aparna Pandey, Deepthi Saligram, Shruthi Ranga Rao
Eye movement patterns in reading vary across languages depending upon the grain size and transparency of the orthography. We studied eye movements in reading Kannada akshara, an alphasyllabary used in South India. Kannada is a very transparent orthography in which the complexity of script layout of orthographic syllables, called akshara, increases when vowel ligatures or more consonants are incorporated into them. There are three levels of such akshara complexity in Kannada: akshara representing vowel alone or a consonant with inherent shwa (basic letters), akshara representing consonant and vowel ligature combination, and akshara representing conjunct consonants and vowel combination. We recorded eye movement patterns from 51 children—17 typically developing (TD), 17 with reading disability (RD) and 17 reading-level-matched typically developing readers (RL) when reading sentences made of different types of akshara. The results showed that the visual-orthographic complexity of akshara in conjunct consonant form increased processing difficulty. The effect was more pronounced in the RD group.
{"title":"Visual-orthographic complexity of Akshara and eye movements in reading: A study in Kannada alphasyllabary","authors":"P. Padakannaya, Aparna Pandey, Deepthi Saligram, Shruthi Ranga Rao","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2015.1071235","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2015.1071235","url":null,"abstract":"Eye movement patterns in reading vary across languages depending upon the grain size and transparency of the orthography. We studied eye movements in reading Kannada akshara, an alphasyllabary used in South India. Kannada is a very transparent orthography in which the complexity of script layout of orthographic syllables, called akshara, increases when vowel ligatures or more consonants are incorporated into them. There are three levels of such akshara complexity in Kannada: akshara representing vowel alone or a consonant with inherent shwa (basic letters), akshara representing consonant and vowel ligature combination, and akshara representing conjunct consonants and vowel combination. We recorded eye movement patterns from 51 children—17 typically developing (TD), 17 with reading disability (RD) and 17 reading-level-matched typically developing readers (RL) when reading sentences made of different types of akshara. The results showed that the visual-orthographic complexity of akshara in conjunct consonant form increased processing difficulty. The effect was more pronounced in the RD group.","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"8 1","pages":"32 - 43"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2015.1071235","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60438216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2014.1000812
Anna Llaurado, L. Tolchinsky
Orthographies not only represent the phonology of a language but also aspects of morphology, syntax and the lexicon. Learning to spell in a particular language involves understanding the relation between the graphic elements of an orthographic system and the levels of language it represents. The goal of this study was to track the developmental path to orthographic spelling in native speakers of Catalan. Typologically, Catalan is a synthetic inflectional language with a rich inflectional and derivational morphology that has a moderately transparent orthography. In most cases, straight phonetic to written mapping renders incorrect spelling and spellers have to resort to morphology, word-contextual rules or to lexical knowledge to spell accurately. We analyse a corpus of written vocabularies from different semantic fields, that prime different syntactic categories and a variety of word features relevant for spelling, produced by 225 native speakers of Catalan from 1st–5th school grade. The productions were characterised in terms of spelling (in)accuracy on the basis of whether phonographic, morphologic, word-contextual or lexical knowledge was required to render the orthographically correct form. Results show that phonographically- and morphologically-based spellings are mastered earlier than orthographic and lexical errors. More errors occurred at the word stem than at the word affix level, suggesting a role of morphological awareness in spelling. Children misspelt words for Natural phenomena less than words in the other semantic fields, suggesting that primary via of exposure to words has an impact on learning to spell. Some linguistic and educational implications of these findings are discussed.
{"title":"The developmental pattern of spelling in Catalan from first to fifth school grade","authors":"Anna Llaurado, L. Tolchinsky","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2014.1000812","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2014.1000812","url":null,"abstract":"Orthographies not only represent the phonology of a language but also aspects of morphology, syntax and the lexicon. Learning to spell in a particular language involves understanding the relation between the graphic elements of an orthographic system and the levels of language it represents. The goal of this study was to track the developmental path to orthographic spelling in native speakers of Catalan. Typologically, Catalan is a synthetic inflectional language with a rich inflectional and derivational morphology that has a moderately transparent orthography. In most cases, straight phonetic to written mapping renders incorrect spelling and spellers have to resort to morphology, word-contextual rules or to lexical knowledge to spell accurately. We analyse a corpus of written vocabularies from different semantic fields, that prime different syntactic categories and a variety of word features relevant for spelling, produced by 225 native speakers of Catalan from 1st–5th school grade. The productions were characterised in terms of spelling (in)accuracy on the basis of whether phonographic, morphologic, word-contextual or lexical knowledge was required to render the orthographically correct form. Results show that phonographically- and morphologically-based spellings are mastered earlier than orthographic and lexical errors. More errors occurred at the word stem than at the word affix level, suggesting a role of morphological awareness in spelling. Children misspelt words for Natural phenomena less than words in the other semantic fields, suggesting that primary via of exposure to words has an impact on learning to spell. Some linguistic and educational implications of these findings are discussed.","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"5 1","pages":"64 - 83"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2014.1000812","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60437615","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2014.959459
C. Tenny
Writing systems are technological innovations that make it possible to record and reproduce the spoken utterances in a human language. They are the oldest, but not the only, kind of language representation system developed by human technology. The field of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) has created various technologies to facilitate communication for people who cannot communicate through language in the normal way. Users of AAC devices are persons with a physical or mental disability which compels them to produce speech using a technological device; and these persons depend on the Language Representation System (LRS) associated with their particular device in order to communicate. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to introduce the kinds of Language Representation Systems used in AAC devices to the audience of this journal; and second, to compare these LRSs with written language. In making this comparison, I show that they are forced into certain inevitable parallels by the structure of natural language which they must represent. They obey the same constraints, among these the impossibility of a truly semantic language representation system. In this paper, I illustrate the range of these LRSs used in AAC devices by illustrating and comparing three different systems, using a tripartite taxonomy of these systems. The three systems are compared with each other and with writing systems, focusing on how they map to the linguistic units of natural language and the compositional structure of natural language. I focus on a subset of the population employing AAC devices: those persons who are physically impaired but cognitively intact; and whose linguistic ability is comparable to any person who communicates through language in the normal way. Next, I compare one of these systems, with the writing system for Japanese, and show that they have converged on some similar responses to different engineering challenges. Finally, I propose that writing systems should be regarded as a subclass of a larger set of Language Representation Systems, of which both they and these LRSs for AAC technology are members.
{"title":"A linguist looks at AAC: Language representation systems for augmentative and alternative communication, compared with writing systems and natural language","authors":"C. Tenny","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2014.959459","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2014.959459","url":null,"abstract":"Writing systems are technological innovations that make it possible to record and reproduce the spoken utterances in a human language. They are the oldest, but not the only, kind of language representation system developed by human technology. The field of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) has created various technologies to facilitate communication for people who cannot communicate through language in the normal way. Users of AAC devices are persons with a physical or mental disability which compels them to produce speech using a technological device; and these persons depend on the Language Representation System (LRS) associated with their particular device in order to communicate. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to introduce the kinds of Language Representation Systems used in AAC devices to the audience of this journal; and second, to compare these LRSs with written language. In making this comparison, I show that they are forced into certain inevitable parallels by the structure of natural language which they must represent. They obey the same constraints, among these the impossibility of a truly semantic language representation system. In this paper, I illustrate the range of these LRSs used in AAC devices by illustrating and comparing three different systems, using a tripartite taxonomy of these systems. The three systems are compared with each other and with writing systems, focusing on how they map to the linguistic units of natural language and the compositional structure of natural language. I focus on a subset of the population employing AAC devices: those persons who are physically impaired but cognitively intact; and whose linguistic ability is comparable to any person who communicates through language in the normal way. Next, I compare one of these systems, with the writing system for Japanese, and show that they have converged on some similar responses to different engineering challenges. Finally, I propose that writing systems should be regarded as a subclass of a larger set of Language Representation Systems, of which both they and these LRSs for AAC technology are members.","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"8 1","pages":"119 - 84"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2014.959459","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60438104","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-01-01Epub Date: 2015-10-09DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2015.1074058
Rebecca Treiman, Nicole Rosales, Brett Kessler
Children begin to learn about the characteristics of print well before formal literacy instruction begins. Reading to children can expose them to print and help them learn about its characteristics. This may be especially true if the print is visually salient, for studies suggest that prereaders pay more attention to such print than to print that is visually less salient. To shed light on the characteristics of the print that US children see in books, especially those characteristics that may contribute to visual salience, we report a quantitative analysis of 73 books that were chosen to be representative of those seen by preschoolers. We found that print that is visually salient due to color, variation, and other features tends to be more common on the covers of books than in the interiors. It also tends to be more common in recently published books than in older books. Even in recent books, however, the print is much less visually salient than the accompanying pictures. Many studies have examined the behavior of adults and children during shared reading, but little research has examined the characteristics of books themselves. Our results provide quantitative information about this topic for one set of characteristics in books for young US children.
{"title":"Characteristics of Print in Books for Preschool Children.","authors":"Rebecca Treiman, Nicole Rosales, Brett Kessler","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2015.1074058","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2015.1074058","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Children begin to learn about the characteristics of print well before formal literacy instruction begins. Reading to children can expose them to print and help them learn about its characteristics. This may be especially true if the print is visually salient, for studies suggest that prereaders pay more attention to such print than to print that is visually less salient. To shed light on the characteristics of the print that US children see in books, especially those characteristics that may contribute to visual salience, we report a quantitative analysis of 73 books that were chosen to be representative of those seen by preschoolers. We found that print that is visually salient due to color, variation, and other features tends to be more common on the covers of books than in the interiors. It also tends to be more common in recently published books than in older books. Even in recent books, however, the print is much less visually salient than the accompanying pictures. Many studies have examined the behavior of adults and children during shared reading, but little research has examined the characteristics of books themselves. Our results provide quantitative information about this topic for one set of characteristics in books for young US children.</p>","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"8 1","pages":"120-132"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2015.1074058","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"34425149","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2014.926806
Marlies de Zeeuw, R. Schreuder, L. Verhoeven
We investigated processing strategies in the reading of Dutch compound words (e.g., ‘bezemsteel’ [broomstick]) by young first- (L1) and second-language (L2) learners in three grades of primary school. Turkish-Dutch bilingual children (L2) and Dutch monolingual children (L1) from second, fourth and sixth grade performed a lexical decision task in which the frequency of the whole compound, the frequency of the first constituent and the frequency of the second constituent was manipulated. We found that reaction times and accuracy scores were influenced by both whole-word and constituent information in both the L1 and L2 learners in all grades. However, the L2 learners were typically less efficient in processing this information. In addition, the way in which whole-word and constituent frequency was processed by the L1 and L2 learners was not stable across grades. The results are discussed in terms of theories on morphological processing and reading acquisition.
{"title":"Lexical processing of nominal compounds in first- and second-language learners across primary grades","authors":"Marlies de Zeeuw, R. Schreuder, L. Verhoeven","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2014.926806","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2014.926806","url":null,"abstract":"We investigated processing strategies in the reading of Dutch compound words (e.g., ‘bezemsteel’ [broomstick]) by young first- (L1) and second-language (L2) learners in three grades of primary school. Turkish-Dutch bilingual children (L2) and Dutch monolingual children (L1) from second, fourth and sixth grade performed a lexical decision task in which the frequency of the whole compound, the frequency of the first constituent and the frequency of the second constituent was manipulated. We found that reaction times and accuracy scores were influenced by both whole-word and constituent information in both the L1 and L2 learners in all grades. However, the L2 learners were typically less efficient in processing this information. In addition, the way in which whole-word and constituent frequency was processed by the L1 and L2 learners was not stable across grades. The results are discussed in terms of theories on morphological processing and reading acquisition.","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"7 1","pages":"133 - 156"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2014.926806","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60437493","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2014.898575
Abbie Grace, Nenagh Kemp
Text messaging is by now a ubiquitous form of computer-mediated communication, especially among university students. An increasing body of research has examined the written language used in text messaging, but little or no data exist regarding how the use of non-conventional spellings, or ‘textisms’, may change over time as people adapt their written language to fit with advances in communication technology. This study reports on naturalistic messages gathered in four consecutive years from four cohorts of Australian first-year undergraduates. Textism use (in particular, ‘contractives’ such as for ) decreased during this time period, in step with the use of newer text-entry systems (e.g., predictive software). Compared to males, females used significantly more textisms in general, and more expressive textisms (letters added for expressive intent, such as for ) in particular. Overall, our results suggest that textism use may continue to decrease as abbreviated language loses its practicality in a landscape of improved technology.
{"title":"Text messaging language: A comparison of undergraduates' naturalistic textism use in four consecutive cohorts","authors":"Abbie Grace, Nenagh Kemp","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2014.898575","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2014.898575","url":null,"abstract":"Text messaging is by now a ubiquitous form of computer-mediated communication, especially among university students. An increasing body of research has examined the written language used in text messaging, but little or no data exist regarding how the use of non-conventional spellings, or ‘textisms’, may change over time as people adapt their written language to fit with advances in communication technology. This study reports on naturalistic messages gathered in four consecutive years from four cohorts of Australian first-year undergraduates. Textism use (in particular, ‘contractives’ such as for ) decreased during this time period, in step with the use of newer text-entry systems (e.g., predictive software). Compared to males, females used significantly more textisms in general, and more expressive textisms (letters added for expressive intent, such as for ) in particular. Overall, our results suggest that textism use may continue to decrease as abbreviated language loses its practicality in a landscape of improved technology.","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"164 1","pages":"220 - 234"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2014.898575","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60437764","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2014.955076
Chan Lü, K. Koda, Dongbo Zhang, Yanhui Zhang
This study examined how the properties of semantic radicals affect character meaning inference among adult learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). A semantic radical is a component of a compound character whose primary function is to provide an aspect of the meaning of its host character. Because radicals differ in the nature of the information they supply and their relationships with the characters' meaning, their functions are not uniformly salient to users. This study focused on the notion of radical functional salience and its impacts on character learning and processing. In Study 1, we identified radical properties pertinent to functional salience via a sequence of property analyses, and determined how the identified properties were related to perceived familiarity with commonly used radicals among native Chinese speakers. Based on the analyses, in Study 2, we examined how functional salience affects the way CFL learners use radical information through character meaning extraction and inference tasks. The results demonstrated that functional salience was differentially related to performance variances. The findings suggest that CFL learners' use of radical information during character processing is explained jointly by the properties of semantic radicals and learners' radical knowledge.
{"title":"Effects of semantic radical properties on character meaning extraction and inference among learners of Chinese as a foreign language","authors":"Chan Lü, K. Koda, Dongbo Zhang, Yanhui Zhang","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2014.955076","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2014.955076","url":null,"abstract":"This study examined how the properties of semantic radicals affect character meaning inference among adult learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). A semantic radical is a component of a compound character whose primary function is to provide an aspect of the meaning of its host character. Because radicals differ in the nature of the information they supply and their relationships with the characters' meaning, their functions are not uniformly salient to users. This study focused on the notion of radical functional salience and its impacts on character learning and processing. In Study 1, we identified radical properties pertinent to functional salience via a sequence of property analyses, and determined how the identified properties were related to perceived familiarity with commonly used radicals among native Chinese speakers. Based on the analyses, in Study 2, we examined how functional salience affects the way CFL learners use radical information through character meaning extraction and inference tasks. The results demonstrated that functional salience was differentially related to performance variances. The findings suggest that CFL learners' use of radical information during character processing is explained jointly by the properties of semantic radicals and learners' radical knowledge.","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"7 1","pages":"169 - 185"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2014.955076","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60438099","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2014.981495
I. Ko, Min Wang
The present study investigated how Korean-English bilinguals read compound words in Korean L1 and English L2. Two masked priming lexical decision experiments were conducted, in which written compound words (e.g., ‘bedroom’) and monomorphemic words with a compound-like structure (e.g., ‘hammock’) served as visual targets and were preceded by constituent visual primes (e.g., ‘room’, ‘mock’). In Experiment 1, within-language prime-target pairs (Korean constituent-Korean compound word), and in Experiment 2, cross-language prime-target pairs (Korean L1 constituent-English L2 compound word) were presented. In Experiment 2, the time course of cross-language activation was examined by manipulating the prime duration (36 ms, 48 ms vs. 100 ms). Experiment 1 showed that Korean compound words are processed based on the morpheme unit rather than the salient visual syllable form. In Experiment 2, when reading English L2 compound words, L1 morphological and phonological information are both activated in the early stage (36 ms prime duration), regardless of semantic relatedness. In the later stage (48 and 100 ms prime durations), L1 morphological activation is constrained by semantic relatedness. Shared phonological (form) information without morphological relatedness between L1 and L2 did not facilitate L2 complex word recognition at all stages. Taken together, these findings suggest that bilingual readers are more sensitive to morphological information than form information in both L1 and L2. There is a quick cross-language activation of L1 morphemic information in reading L2 complex words.
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