How do Chinese readers identify phonetic and semantic radicals from compound characters?

Abstract

Recent studies have indicated that Chinese readers decompose phonetic-semantic compound character into radicals and retrieve information about pronunciation and meaning of that character. To accurately retrieve the pronunciation of a character, readers need to identify the phonetic radicals from the constituent radicals. A database on radicals of Chinese characters appears in primary school textbooks was established. Radical property (absolute phonetic, absolute semantic or ambiguous) and the positional consistency of the radical were coded for each radical. Analysis of the database regarding the factors mentioned developmentally. It serves as a foundation to investigate the process of phonetic and semantic radical identification. To study identification strategies employed by readers, an experiment was conducted. Adult participants were required to identify phonetic and semantic radicals from pseudo-characters of left-right configuration with varying radical properties and positional consistencies. Results suggest that readers consider the radical property and positional consistency at the same time to make their decision.