學刊論文
Chinese Readers’ Knowledge of How Chinese Orthography Represents Phonology

中華心理學刊
民96 , 49 卷, 4 期, 315-334


Ming Lo(Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University);Chih-Wei Hue(Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University);Fang-Zhi Tsai(Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University)

 

Abstract

Phonetic awareness refers to a Chinese reader’s knowledge of the principles governing the orthography-phonology relationships in Chinese characters (Shu, Anderson, & Wu, 2000). Shu et al. suggested that a phonetically aware reader can infer the pronunciation of an unknown character from its constituent components. In particular, they observed that a Chinese reader uses the right component of a left-and-right arranged two-component character to infer the character’s pronunciation. However, analysis of seven character groups used by elementary school students and adults showed that in a left-and-right arranged two-component character, both components may provide cues to its pronunciation. The analysis also found that certain simple characters
have higher validity in representing phonology than others. According to the statistical model of language learning proposed by Saffran, Aslin and Newport (1996), a learner can acquire an understanding of the statistical
nature of linguistic input through repetitive use of the language. For Chinese characters, the mapping of  orthography to phonology is imperfect and probabilistic. Thus, according to the statistical learning model, a Chinese reader needs to understand the statistical nature of the mapping between the pronunciation of a
character and its components. We tested this assumption in two experiments. The participants in the first experiment were second-, fourth-, and sixth- graders. Their vocabulary sizes were assessed, and their guesses about the pronunciation of a group of pseudo-characters composed of two left-and-right arranged components were recorded. The experiment results indicate the following. (1) The so-called ‘‘position strategy’’ is an oversimplification of how a Chinese reader uses a character’s components to infer the character’s pronunciation. (2) A Chinese reader knows which simple characters are more likely to represent the phonology. (3) A  Chinesereader knows the probabilities that the various components of a character represent the phonology. That is, the reader knows that the right component is more likely to provide cues to the character’s pronunciation than the left component. (4) As a Chinese reader’s vocabulary increases, the way he/she uses a character’s
components to infer the character’s pronunciation may best be described as the so called ‘‘position strategy’’. In the second experiment, the concept of the ‘‘position strategy’’ was tested further and verified, using college
students as the participants. 

 

Keywords: Character pronunciation, Chinese Character, Meta-linguistic awareness, Phonetic
awareness, Statistical model of language learning

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