Contextual Effects on Mandarin Biased Heterographic Homophone Resolution

• Main Authors: Chen,Yi-Chun, 陳意鈞
• Other Authors: Hsiao, Hui-Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/55011557865516290906

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 華語文教學系 === 104 === The present study aims at exploring the effects of contextual constraints on the resolution of Mandarin biased heterographic homophones. Through two cross-modal naming tasks, we purported to answer the following research questions: (1) Does relative frequency affect meaning activation in a neutral context? (2) Do local contextual constraints influence meaning activation at the early stage of biased heterographic homophone resolution? (3) Does the inclusion of a global context have an early effect during ambiguity resolution? The results indicated that relative meaning frequency does not affect meaning activation. In the neutral context, naming times for both the dominant and the subordinate meanings did not differ significantly. Secondly, strong local contextual constraints could lead to selective activation of the correct meaning, while inhibiting the activation of improper meanings. Without contextual support, even the dominant meaning of a biased heterographic homophone could not be successfully activated. Thirdly, providing discourse constraints did not facilitate activation of the correct meaning, but rather led to an overall latency in naming times. The results of the study disconfirm the Modular Hypothesis, which opposes an early effect of contextual constraints. Additionally, the results cannot be explained by the Reordered Access Model, which argues against selective access of the correct meaning by contextual information. Our results are most compatible with the Context Sensitive Model (e.g., Vu et al., 2000). According to this model, a strong context can activate the single meaning it supports. Nevertheless, our results suggest that global context does not yield additional effects when local constraints are sufficient. This may be caused by the fact that global context does not have an early effect at all, or that global constraints do not exert extra effects when there are enough constraints in the local context.