The use of probabilistic lexicality cues for word segmentation in Chinese reading

Abstract

In an eye-tracking experiment we examined whether Chinese readers were sensitive to information concerning how often a Chinese character appears as a single-character word versus the first character in a two-character word, and whether readers use this information to segment words and adjust the amount of parafoveal processing of subsequent characters during reading. Participants read sentences containing a two-character target word with its first character more or less likely to be a single-character word. The boundary paradigm was used. The boundary appeared between the first character and the second character of the target word, and we manipulated whether readers saw an identity or a pseudocharacter preview of the second character of the target. Linear mixed-effects models revealed reduced preview benefit from the second character when the first character was more likely to be a single-character word. This suggests that Chinese readers use probabilistic combinatorial information about the likelihood of a Chinese character being single-character word or a two-character word online to modulate the extent of parafoveal processing.

Keywords:

• Word segmentation
• Preview benefit
• Eye movements
• Chinese reading

Notes

¹In the corpus based on written text by Chinese Linguistic Data Consortium (2003), the top 100 frequently used Chinese words are all one-character words, making up 30% of all words encountered.

²In order to further investigate the possibility that the predictability of C2 on the basis of C1 could contribute to our effects, we undertook a further set of LMM analyses in which predictability was included as a fixed factor. These analyses produced an identical set of results for the other factors, indicating that this variable did not cause our effects.