Work

Tracing Lexical and Sub-Lexical Semantic Contributions to Chinese Compound Word Recognition: An ERP Investigation With Semantic Priming

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: There are divergent viewpoints on how Chinese compound words undergo morphological processing-especially regarding the role and timing of morphemic semantics during word recognition. Whether-and in what way-lexical and sublexical semantics influence the recognition of Chinese compound words remains unclear; this issue is central to the debate between form-then-meaning and form-and-meaning processing models. METHOD: We investigated morphological effects on compound processing by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) to Chinese compound targets that were preceded by five prime types: W+M+, W-M+, W-M- (W = whole-word semantics, M = morphemic meaning, "+" = congruent, "-" = incongruent), a purely semantic prime, and an unrelated prime. This design simultaneously controlled prime-target relatedness at both the morphemic and whole-word levels. RESULTS: The results showed that, across both the 100-300 ms and 300-500 ms windows, the W-M+ and W-M- conditions produced statistically equivalent priming effects, suggesting that the semantic content of individual morphemes contributes only minimally to recognizing the compound as a whole. CONCLUSIONS: These findings align more closely with morphological models proposing parallel processing of form and meaning, as opposed to frameworks that assume a strictly hierarchical or step-by-step sequence.

Source: Journal of Integrative Neuroscience

DOI: 10.31083/jin40569

Authors: Yuling Wang, Fei Gao, Minghu Jiang

Institutions: Beijing Foreign Studies University, Fudan University, Tsinghua University

Language: English

Topic: Reading and Literacy Development

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $1,900

Funder: National Natural Science Foundation of China