Processing Ambiguous Morphemes in Chinese Compound Word Recognition: Behavioral and ERP Evidence

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Chinese Linguistics

Background:

• Ambiguous morphemes pose a challenge in understanding word recognition processes.
• Chinese compound words often contain morphemes with multiple meanings.
• Previous research has not fully elucidated the processing of ambiguous morphemes in Chinese.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the processing of ambiguous morphemes in Chinese compound word recognition.
• To examine the influence of dominant and subordinate morpheme meanings on word recognition.
• To explore the temporal dynamics of morpheme activation using behavioral and electrophysiological measures.

Main Methods:

• A masked priming lexical decision task was employed.
• Behavioral data (response times) and event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded.
• Participants identified Chinese compound words with ambiguous initial morphemes.

Main Results:

• Facilitative priming was observed when primes and targets shared morphemes, with stronger effects for consistent meanings.
• The N400 component showed a similar priming pattern to behavioral data.
• The N250 component revealed priming for dominant targets but not subordinate ones, with similar facilitation strength across prime types.

Conclusions:

• Morpheme meanings in Chinese compound words can be activated rapidly.
• Dominant morpheme meanings are accessed more readily than subordinate meanings.
• These findings contribute to understanding lexical processing and semantic ambiguity in Chinese.