| Research Abstract |
It is a well-known observation that native Chinese speakers learning Japanese can utilize their knowledge of Chinese characters to understand Japanese words written in kanji. However, due to subtle differences between Chinese and Japanese misunderstandings occasionally occur. The present study conducted a series of experiments to clarify inter-language lexical processing between Chinese and Japanese from the orthographic, phonological and conceptual perspectives. Prior to the experiments, we produced a database for the 1,945 basic Japanese characters which is now accessible through the Web site of the Oxford Text Archive, Oxford University (see Tamaoka, Kirsner, Yanase, Miyaoka ＆ Kawakami, 2002 (in press)). The database provides 30 cells which explain in detail the various characteristics of 1,945 basic Japanese kanji including kanji frequency, lexical productivity and On-reading ratio. The kanji compound words which were used for the experiments were selected from this database. The r
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esults of the experiments for native Chinese speakers with advanced Japanese proficiency showed that orthographic and phonological similarities between the two languages did not have significant effects on native Chinese speakers cognitive processing of Japanese. It is, however, interesting to discover that conceptual similarities between Chinese and Japanese had strong effects on the processing of Japanese words (i.e., the second language condition of Japanese processing) in particular, and minor effects on the processing of Chinese words (i.e. the first language condition of Chinese processing). The finding of the present study separate orthographic and phonological entries for each word which shares the same conceptual lexicon. The present study also suggested that it is important to classify kanji compound words existing Japanese and/or Chinese to instruct kanji compound words to native Chinese speakers, because they are likely to presume that two-kanji compound words exiting in Chinese are also available in Japanese. Less
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