There are striking differences between alphabetic (e.g., English or Dutch) and non-alphabetic languages (e.g., Chinese). In alphabetic language, orthography and phonology are unavoidably confounded. However, in non-alphabetic languages, the orthograp坷 and phonology can separated independently. In the speech production domain, most research has been carried out using materials in English or other alphabetic languages, and only a small amount has been addressed to non-alphabetic languages. The time course of the semantic, orthographic and phonological activation in Chinese speech production was investigated using picture-word interference paradigm.
The basic manipulation was to change the relationship between an interfering word and picture name, while altered the interval between picture and distractor word. The results of Exp. 2 and 3 showed that semantic inhibition effect occurred in the early stage of lexical access, next orthographic facilitation effect appeared, finally the phonological facilitation effect occurred in the late stage. The orthography plays an important role in the lexical access of speech production. The orthographic facilitation effect could be accounted for by supposing the orthographic relatedness between picture and interfering words enhances the selection of the picture name.
The data of Exp. 4 showed that the syllable alone and the syllable+tone units produced significant facilitation effects to picture naming. The results suggested that (1) syllable alone could act as a separate planning unit at the phonological encoding stage, (2) syllable+tone also is a unit in word-form encoding.
The results of Exp. 5 to 9 suggested that there exist multiple orthographic activation and feedback from orthographic to semantic level. No multiple semantic activations were detected due to the experimental materials.
Based on the above experiments and other studies, a model of the lexical access in Chinese monosyllabic words production is suggested.
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