Authors:

Wydell, T.N., Butterworth, B. & Patterson, K.

Reference:

Year of publication:

1995

CBU number:

3276

Abstract:

Most Japanese Kanji characters have several different pronunciations, at least one ON-reading (of Chinese origin) and a KUN-reading (of Japanese origin); the appropriate pronunciation is determined by intra-word context. There are also Kanji characters which have a single ON-reading and no KUN-reading. With 2-character ON-reading Kanji words as stimuli, naming experiments were carried out to investigate print-to-sound consistency effects. The consistent Kanji words were those where neither constituent character has an alternative ON-reading or a KUN-reading, hence there can be no pronunciation ambiguity for these words. The inconsistent items were ON-reading words composed of characters which have KUN-readings that are appropriate to other words in which the characters occur, hence there should be some ambiguity about the pronunciation of the constituent characters. Six experiments yielded reliable effects of both word and character frequency/familiarity on speed and accuracy of word naming, but virtually no evidence for consistency effects. It is concluded that for Kanji, phonology is computed dominantly at the word rather than the character level.