关键词: 合成词, 整词表征, 词形表征, 语义透明度, 心理词典

Abstract: Whether Chinese compound words are represented in a decomposed way or as a whole in our mental lexicon is a long lasting heated debate in the literature. Theoretically, compound words can be accessed much faster as one unitary unit than as two decomposed units. Thus, it is not surprising that whole word representation was supported by several theoretical models. Empirically, both behavioral and eye movement studies call attention to the importance of compound words both in visual word processing and normal Chinese reading. Such evidence may suggest that Chinese compound words have word-level representations in the mental lexicon and are activated during word processing. However, these studies did not make a distinction among the three different kinds of word-level representations-phonological, semantic and orthographic representations, as suggested by The Constituency Model. Further examination of previous studies highlights some evidence that supports the independent existence of word-level phonological and semantic representations; yet few literatures addresses an independent orthographic representation at the word level. To fill up this research gap and paint a panorama picture of the mental representation of Chinese compound words, this article attempts to propose a number of possible methods to test it as well as analyzing factors that may affect experiments.

Key words: compound words, word-level representation, orthographic representation, semantic transparency, mental lexicon