Effects of semantic radicals on Chinese character categorization and character decision

Abstract

A defining feature of the Chinese script is character components that convey meaning to readers. This component is called a semantic radical. We report our investigations of three features of the semantic radical namely character type, consistency and combinability on Chinese character identification. We defined character type as the extent to which the meaning of a whole character is denoted by the semantic radical; consistency as the extent to which a semantic radical consistently represents a specific meaning; and combinability as the total number of characters (tokens) that share the same semantic radical. We found that characters which had the same or similar meaning as the semantic radical it carried were processed more efficiently in semantic categorization and character decision tasks as were characters with high combinability semantic radicals. Consistency effects interacted with other variables. We argue that these results support the view that semantic subcomponents are processed during the course of character recognition.

漢字的特徵之一是具有意旁，以啟示一個定換語意。作者觀察意旁的形式、一致性與混合性對漢字辨認作用。形式是指意旁指示一個字語意的程度。一致性是一個意旁能指示某一特殊意義的程度。而混合性是擁有同一意旁的字數。結果發現，與意旁同一語意以及具高混合意旁的字在語意歸類與決定作業裡被處理的較快。此結果被解釋為，漢字辨認期間涉及意旁的處理。