汉语“主观词”的表征及其加工

The Representation and Processing of Subjective Words for Chinese Readers

本文提出了"主观词"的概念,并探讨主观词存在的心理现实性以及主观词的加工特征。包括3项研究:研究1考察了普通大学生对双字结构的词汇辨别情况,发现他们倾向于将短语和词主观判断为词,即他们按照个体对词的独特表征认知词,证实了主观词存在的心理现实性。研究2和研究3分别采用"词优效应"研究中使用的强迫选择作业和词汇判断任务考察主观词加工的特征。研究2发现,读者加工词和主观词(语法上是短语但主观评定为词)的正确率和反应时没有差异,但与非词条件相比,表现为正确率高,反应时短;研究3的反应时结果同研究2,而3种条件的正确率均在90%以上且不存在显著差异。在本研究条件下,得出以下结论:(1)主观词的存在具有心理现实性:读者对汉语词语的表征是主观的,不一定符合词的语法学规定;(2)在强迫选择作业下,与非词相比,表现出词优效应,主观词作为整体被识别。(3)在词汇判断任务下,主观词与词相同,与非词相比,表现出加工优势。

Given that there are no visual spaces between words in written Chinese and characters are the basic perceptual unit, it is intriguing how Chinese readers segment and represent words. Many studies have indicated that words play an important role in Chinese reading （Yan et al., 2006; Li et al., 2005; Rayner et al., 2007; Bai et al., 2008; Yan et al., 2009）, while some other research has demonstrated that characters are more important than words in reading （Chen et al., 2003）. However, some researchers have found that native Chinese readers have no clear concept of words, and they often disagree on how to divide the continuous string of characters within a sentence into words （Hoosain, 1992; Tsai et al., 1998; Miller et al., 2007）. So there is a discrepancy here： If words play an important role in Chinese reading, what are the characteristics of these words？ We propose that Chinese readers segment text into words according to complex cognitive representations： ＂subjective words＂ （e.g., representing the phrase ＂economic development＂ as a single word）. Three studies were conducted to explore 1） whether subjective words are psychologically real in readers’ minds and 2） how these subjective words are processed. The first study examined how well the readers could recognize the two-character combination as a word or a phrase. The results showed that the readers tend to judge phrases as subjective words. which indicated that they represented words according to their own complex cognition about words, which demonstrated that subjective words were real in readers’ minds. The second and third experiment investigated the characteristics of subjective word processing. The second experiment explored whether subjective words had a ＂word superiority effect＂ — whether the readers found the position of a character in subjective words more efficiently than in non-words. The third experiment examined whether the reaction time of classifying subjective words as words was shorter than nonwords by using a lexical decision task. The results showed that there was no significant difference between words and subjective words in reaction time and accuracy. The accuracy rate of searching for the position of a character in subjective words was higher than in nonwords in the second experiment. In the third experiment, we didn’t find any significant difference between subjective words and nonwords in accuracy rate. To sum up, the present study indicated that native Chinese readers don’t judge a two-character combination as a word or a phrase accurately, and that they often confused them. It also demonstrated that subjective words are psychologically real in readers’ minds, which shows that the readers represented subjective words, and that some subjective words violated the Chinese grammar rules. The second experiment found that the word superiority effect in subjective words is the same as in the words compared with nonwords under compulsive choice task. The third experiment indicated that subjective words are processed more efficiently than nonwords. Subjective words are more likely to be processed as a whole.