义符在中文名词和动词分类中的作用

The Role of Semantic Radicals of Chinese Characters in Grammatical Categorization of Chinese Visual Words

通过3个实验,考察了义符在中文名词和动词分类中的作用。实验1表明,义符提供了重要的语法种类信息,在中文名词和动词分类中有重要作用。当义符与词类一致时分类快,与词类相反时对分类起干扰作用。实验2表明,高频词分类时间短,错误率亦低。义符和词频有显著的交互作用,义符对低频词分类作用更大。实验3表明,具体性高的词分类时间短,错误率亦低。义符和具体性之间无显著的交互作用。整个研究表明,义符不仅是结构的“块”,也是语义的“块”,还是语法的“块”。所以如此,与中文名词和动词的结构特点有关。中文名词大多用义符标记事物的物质组成,动词大多用义符标记动作发出的器官或完成动作的工具。义符语法意义的发现丰富了中文和中文认知的理论,对中文教学也有重要启示。

In order to explore the role of semantic radicals of Chinese characters in grammatical categorization of Chinese visual words, three experiments were conducted. Experiment 1 indicated that semantic radicals of Chinese characters provided important information of grammatical classes of words and played important role in categorization of Chinese nouns and verbs. When agreeing with the grammatical classes of the words, semantic radicals could promote the cognition of words＂ grammatical meaning. Otherwise, they would interfere the cognition. Experiment 2 showed that high frequency words were classified faster and with lower error rates than low frequency words. There were notable interaction between semantic radicals and word frequency, the effects of semantic radicals on categorization of low frequency words were more striking. Experiment 3 showed that the concreter the words were, the faster the words were classified, the lower error rates were pro- duced. But there was no interaction between the role of the semantic radicals and word concreteness. The semantic radicals agreeing with the grammatical classes of words would progress both high concrete words and low concrete words. The whole study showed that semantic radicals of Chinese characters are processing units of both Chinese nouns and verbs. Semantic radicals are not only＂ structural chunks＂ and＂ semantic chunks＂, but also＂ grammatical chunks＂. This phenomenon are attributed to the structure characteristics of Chinese nouns and verbs. By semantic radicals, most of Chinese nouns mark the materials that things were made of or made from, and most of Chinese verbs mark the organs or tools of actions. The discovery of the grammatical meaning of semantic radicals will illuminate the teaching of Chinese. It also will enrich the theories of Chinese and the cognition of Chinese characters and words.