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ERIC Number: EJ897969
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2010
Pages: 13
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0142-7164
EISSN: N/A
Morphological Processing of Chinese Compounds from a Grammatical View
Liu, Phil D.; McBride-Chang, Catherine
Applied Psycholinguistics, v31 n4 p605-617 2010
In the present study, morphological structure processing of Chinese compounds was explored using a visual priming lexical decision task among 21 Hong Kong college students. Two compounding structures were compared. The first type was the subordinate, in which one morpheme modifies the other (e.g., [image omitted] ["laam4 kau4", "basket-ball", "basketball"]), similar to most English compounds (e.g., a "snowman" is a "man" made of "snow" and "toothpaste" is a "paste" for "teeth"; the second morpheme is the "head," modified morpheme). The second type was the coordinative, in which both morphemes contribute equally to the meaning of the word. An example in Chinese is [image omitted] ("faa1 cou2", "flower grass", i.e., "plant"). There are virtually no examples of this type in English, but an approximate equivalent phrase might be "in and out", in which neither "in" nor "out" is more important than the other in comprising the expression. For the subordinate Chinese compound words, the same structure in prime and target facilitated the semantic priming effect, whereas for coordinative Chinese compound words, the same structure across prime and target inhibited the semantic priming effect. Results suggest that lexical processing of Chinese compounds is influenced by compounding structure processing.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Hong Kong
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A