汉字的解体及其机制

The Mechanism Underlying Chinese Orthographic Decomposition

“汉字的解体”是指,持续的注视一个熟悉的汉字之后,会产生一种“愈看愈不像”的奇怪感觉。本研究使用一个词汇判断的作业,观察汉字解体的现象并探索其发生的机制。一个指标β用以指示解体率。实验比较“独体字”与“合体字”的解体率与观察一个“形声字”的解体率是否与字与其“声旁”的语音相似性及与其“义旁”的语意相似性有关。结果显示,合体字的解体率大于独体字的解体率,但独体字仍然解体。“形声字”的解体率与“字–声旁”的语音与“字–义旁”的语意相似性无关。此结果表示,一个汉字的解体与此字注视之后是否触发字与其组成部件的字汇地址无关。解体的另一可能原因是意符的汉字其“字形”与“语音”的连结不是依据一套“形–音”对应的关系、而是“强记”而学会的。因此,其收录的语音不能用来结合注视之后的支离的视觉讯息成为原始的字形,最终造成解体的感觉。

Chinese Orthographic Decomposition refers to a sense of uncertainty about the writing of a well-learned Chinese character following a prolonged inspection of the character. An implicit test using a lexical-decision task, in which 2-character words were discriminated from 2-character pseudo-words, was used to detect the orthographic decomposition. An index designated as β was developed to measure the rate of decomposition. Results of this study show that repeated presentations of a character consisting of 2 radi- cals (the LR-character) resulted in a larger value of β than did those of a character consisting of a single radi- cal. However, the value of β for a LR-character was independent of the pro-nounceableness and meaning- fulness of its constituent radicals. These results suggest that Chinese orthographic decomposition is due to the absence of a direct link between the orthography and the sound pattern of Chinese characters.