1.1 Motivation
The Chinese language has a very different writing system compared to the alphabetic scripts. A Chinese character generally represents one syllable and may be a word or a part of a polysyllabic word. In modern Chinese, more than 80% of the characters are compound characters that can be divided into a semantic component and a phonetic component (Wan, 1991). The semantic component may reflect the meaning of the character while the phonetic component may represent the pronunciation. The validity of the two components can vary. For example, the character “枝” (zhī, ‘branch’) has the semantic component “木” (mù, ‘tree’), which is related in meaning to the character itself. Besides, its phonetic component “支” (zhī,
‘branch’) is pronounced the same as the character. Moreover, the character “特” (tè,
‘special’) has the semantic component “牛” (niú, ‘cow’), which is unrelated in meaning to the character itself. And its phonetic component “寺” (sì, ‘temple’) has a different pronunciation compared to the character.
Under such a system, character decomposition might be a beneficial strategy for L1 learners when they process Chinese characters. The natural question is whether it actually takes place and if yes, since when. Do children acquire characters as a whole or as combinations of components? Are they aware of the function of the components and can they make productive use of the components? Is there any developmental difference between the semantic and phonetic components? Do they process familiar and unfamiliar characters similarly? And does the richness of context (i.e., a word or a sentence) influence children’s employment of the strategy? Finally, the relationship between the awareness of components and reading development can be explored. The investigation might demonstrate the advantage of character decomposition in reading
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not only words or sentences, but also the whole texts. The results might enhance our understanding of the intricate process of reading and provide possible ways to facilitate it.
Previous studies (Ho, Ng, & Ng, 2003; Shu & Anderson, 1997; Shu, Anderson,
& Wu, 2000) have investigated the component knowledge in some details, but the semantic and phonetic components have not been considered together. Besides, the role of phonetic components and context in meaning access receives less attention, and the reading development has often been examined at the word-level or sentence-level, but not at the discourse-level. In terms of the participants, they mainly came from Mainland China and Hong Kong. Few studies have focused on children in Taiwan. Therefore, the present study will try to add to the width and depth of the investigation on character acquisition and reading development by addressing the above issues.
1.2 Theoretical Framework
The Chinese characters are originally divided into Wén ‘simple characters’ and Zì
‘composite characters’ according to Shuōwénjiězì ‘Explanation on Simple and Composite Characters’ written by Shen Xu. Simple characters cannot be further decomposed into meaningful components. Composite characters, on the other hand, are formed by the combination of simple characters and they can thus be decomposed.
To be more specific, simple characters include Xiàngxíngzì ‘pictographs’ and Zhǐshìzì ‘simple ideographs’ while composite characters include Huìyìzì ‘compound ideographs’ and Xíngshēngzì ‘phonetic compounds.’1 Pictographs, to begin with, are formed by the illustration of concrete objects. The character “日” (rì, ‘sun’), for example, depicts the shape of the sun itself. Simple ideographs are formed by the
1 The English translation of the four types of characters follows Martin (1972).
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symbolic signs. “上” (shàng, ‘up’) is an example that indicates the abstract concept of
‘up.’ Turning to the composite characters, compound ideographs are formed by combining two or more characters together. An example of it is “明” (míng, ‘bright’), which combines the form and meaning of “日” (rì, ‘sun’) and “月” (yuè, ‘moon’).
Phonetic compounds, however, are formed by combining Yìfú ‘semantic radical’ with Yīnfú ‘phonetic radical,’2 which indicate the meaning and the pronunciation of the whole characters, respectively. For example, the character “松” (sōng, ‘pine’) receives its meaning from the semantic radical “木” (mù, ‘tree’) and its pronunciation from the phonetic radical “公” (gōng, ‘male’). Therefore, whereas compound ideographs have combination of meanings, phonetic compounds have union of meanings and sounds.
As mentioned before, validity of the semantic and phonetic radicals in phonetic compounds varies from character to character. “枝” (zhī, ‘branch’), for example, is transparent with a reliable semantic radical, “木” (mù, ‘tree’), which hints at the meaning of the character. It is also regular with a trustworthy phonetic radical, “支”
(zhī, ‘branch’), to provide the pronunciation of the character. “特” (tè, ‘special’), on the other hand, is opaque with an unreliable semantic radical, “牛” (niú, ‘cow’), which relates little to the meaning of the character. It is also irregular with an untrustworthy phonetic radical, “寺” (sì, ‘temple’), which is pronounced differently from the character (d’Arcais, 1992; Ho et al., 2003; Shu & Anderson, 1997; Shu et al., 2000).
1.3 Research Questions
Under this theoretical framework, the research questions of this thesis are as follows:
2 Different English translations for Yìfú and Yīnfú have been proposed in the literature. Martin (1972) used ‘radical’ and ‘phonetic’ while Ho et al. (2003) referred to the two as the ‘semantic radical’ and
‘phonetic radical.’ The current study mainly follows Ho et al. (2003) for the clarity of the translation.
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1) Are the transparent phonetic compounds easier to acquire compared to the opaque phonetic compounds?
2) Is the meaning retrieval of characters easier in the word-level context or in the sentence-level context?
3) Are the regular phonetic compounds easier to acquire compared to the irregular phonetic compounds?
4) How is semantic or/and phonetic radical awareness related to reading development?
5) Does the effect of radical awareness interact with character familiarity?
6) What are the developmental stages of radical awareness?
1.4 Significance of the Study
The present study will initiate a new framework under which both semantic and phonetic radical knowledge can be examined systematically. The development of the two radicals can be compared, and meaning access can be studied not only from the use of semantic radical knowledge as in previous studies, but also from the use of phonetic radical knowledge in the present study. The effect of context on semantic radical activation can also be revealed. In addition, the role of radical awareness in reading can be established not only at the word-level and sentence-level as it has been reported before, but also at the discourse-level.
1.5 Organization of the Thesis
This thesis is organized as follows: Chapter Two summarizes some previous studies on Chinese character recognition and reading acquisition. A new classification of Chinese characters is also provided. Afterwards, Chapter Three details the research design of the present study. Chapter Four then presents and discusses the results while Chapter Five concludes the whole thesis.
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