雙字詞的表徵

The Representation of Bimorphemic Words

三個實驗用來觀察多字詞的處理是否先從一個詞解構成一群的組成字開始。實驗1使用一個遮蔽促發的程序，促發項是一個雙字詞的第一或第二組成字。結果發現，組成字與詞同義（透明）者，則第一或第二組成字均產生促發效果。但如果組成字與詞不同義（不透明），詞彙觸接只呈第一字的促發效果。實驗二重複實驗一，但使用對等於目標雙字詞第一字或第二字的英文字作為促發項。結果違反「解構」的假說。實驗3操弄同字詞的數目，結果發現對透明詞的觸接有作用，對不透明詞的無作用。本研究結果支持雙字詞是以整體的方式表徵。

We report three experiments examining the hypothesis that lexical processing of multi-character words proceeds from a decomposition of the whole into its constituents. The first experiment used a masked priming procedure where the prime was either the first, or the second character of a two-character word. We showed that with semantically compositional ("transparent") words, priming obtained whether the prime was the first or the second constituent. However, when the constituents were not semantically compositional ("opaque"), lexical access was only facilitated when the prime was the first constituent of the word, contradicting the decomposition view. This result was extended in Experiment 2 using a bilingual variation of the same paradigm - the prime was an English word associate of the first or second constituent of a two-character Chinese word. The results also contradicted the predictions of the decomposition hypothesis. In the third experiment, we manipulated cohort size of the first and second constituent, and showed that whereas cohort size modulated access for transparent words, it had no effect for opaque words. The results were explained with a cohort model which hypothesizes that bimorphemic words are represented as a whole.