Preserved reading aloud with semantic deficits: evidence for a non-semantic lexical route for reading Chinese

This article describes a Cantonese dyslexic patient with a dissociation between reading ability and oral naming, similar to previously reported cases of Chinese dyslexia. Additional semantic tests without pictorial input were given to localize his impairment to the semantic system. His largely preserved reading performance vis-à-vis semantic deficits, together with the absence of assembled phonology in Chinese, support a model of the Chinese lexicon in which reading can be achieved via two different lexical routes, one with semantic mediation and one without. The patient's poor ability to make homophony judgments of written characters and the high rate of tonal errors suggest that brain injury may have a more detrimental effect on suprasegmental than segmental features of phonological representations.