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Is Character Position Encoding in Chinese Modulated by Morpheme-Level Semantics? Evidence from Lexical Decision and Sentence Reading

delete2026-04-22
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PRE
AI
W
Wen Zhang
M
Manuel Perea
X
Xingshan Li *
DOI:10.1080/10888438.2026.2661222delete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
As a logographic writing system, Chinese characters function as morphemes carrying semantic content. The present study investigated whether character position encoding in Chinese is modulated by morpheme-level semantic information. Two experiments were carried out using an unprimed lexical decision task (Experiment 1, N=70; mean age 21.8; 58.6% female) and sentence reading with eye-tracking (Experiment 2, N=70, mean age 22.7; 64.3% female). In both experiments, we adopted the paradigm for studying position encoding – the transposed-character effect (TC effect). Critically, we manipulated the semantic relatedness between the two constituent characters of disyllabic words and tested whether it modulates the TC effect. Results showed a consistent TC effect. But neither experiment showed any differences in the TC effect between semantically related and unrelated morpheme pairs, showing that morpheme-level semantic relatedness does not modulate transposition effects. The results provide no evidence that morpheme-level semantic relatedness modulates TC effect in Chinese.
Keywords:
Chinese characters
morpheme-level semantics
position encoding
transposed-character effect
lexical decision

Journal

Scientific Studies of Reading cover
Scientific Studies of Reading
IF:
2.4
Papers:
62
Citations:
2.8K

Organization

U
universitat de valència and eri-lectura
Scholars:
1
Papers: 1
Citations: 0
C
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Scholars:
3.9W
Papers: 1.5W
Citations: 58.4W
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