Work

Native and Non-Native Speakers’ Recognition of Chinese Two-Character Words in Audio Sentence Comprehension

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: Two experiments were conducted to examine native and non-native speakers' recognition of Chinese two-character words (2C-words) in the context of audio sentence comprehension. The recording was played of a sentence, in which a collocation composed of a number word, a sortal classifier, and a noun (NCN) was embedded. When the participants were about to hear the noun of the NCN (Noun), the playing stopped, and a target was visually presented, which was the Noun, the character-transposed word of the Noun (NounT), or a control word (NounC), or was a homophone nonword for Noun, NounT, or NounC. The participants were required to make a lexical decision on the target before they resumed listening. The results showed that both native and non-native speakers were able to take visually presented 2C-word targets as semantic whole entities in the context of audio sentence comprehension, which was mediated by their Chinese proficiency. Native speakers readily processed visually presented 2C-words both as wholes and according to their constituent characters, but non-native speakers were not likely to process the 2C-words according to their constituent characters.

Source: Behavioral Sciences

DOI: 10.3390/bs14121169

Authors: Wenling Ma, Degao Li, Xiuling Dong

Institution: Qufu Normal University

Language: English

Topic: Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism

Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience

Field: Neuroscience

Domain: Life Sciences

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,501

Funder: National Social Science Fund of China