Word-superiority effect as a function of semantictransparency of Chinese bimorphemic compound words

摘要

The word-superiority effect (WSE) describes the superior recognition of wordconstituents in a word, as opposed to a non-word, context. In this study, theWSE was used as a diagnostic tool to examine the modulatory effect of wordsemantic transparency on the degree to which Chinese bimorphemic compoundwords are lexically represented as unitised wholes. Word semantic transparencyrefers to the degree to which word constituents are semantically transparent/opaque to whole-word meaning. A modified Reicher–Wheeler paradigm and acharacter identification task were employed. Compounds with at least oneopaque constituent (fully and partially opaque) patterned together anddisplayed a larger WSE (more word-like) than fully transparent compounds.A space occurs naturally between constituents of Chinese compounds. Presentresults corroborated with recent results on English compound processing inwhich a space was artificially inserted between constituents of naturallyconcatenated compounds. Independently, the WSE was larger for high-frequency than low-frequency Chinese compounds.