A database of overlapping ambiguous strings in Chinese reading

In the absence of inter-word spaces, Chinese text sometimes presents word boundary ambiguity. One common case is the overlapping ambiguous string (OAS), a three-character string (ABC) where the middle character can form distinct words with both the character to its left (AB) and the character to its right (BC), creating segmentation ambiguity between AB-C and A-BC. This structure makes OASs a valuable tool for investigating the cognitive mechanisms of Chinese word segmentation. We introduce a comprehensive OAS database consisting of 952,497 OASs, each with 43 types of linguistic information at the character, word, and OAS levels. To illustrate how to use the database, we conducted an eye-tracking reading experiment manipulating whether the first character of the OAS (i.e., character A) could stand alone in sentences. Results showed that when character A could not stand alone, readers were more likely to group it with the next character B, leading to an AB-C segmentation. These findings validate the utility of the OAS database in understanding word segmentation during Chinese reading. The potential applications of the database in artificial intelligence, education, and writing system reform are discussed.