Early, but not overwhelming: The effect of prior context on segmenting overlapping ambiguous strings when reading Chinese

The current study investigated how the prior context influences word segmentation of overlapping ambiguous strings when reading Chinese. Chinese readers’ eye movements were recorded as they read sentences containing a three-character overlapping ambiguous string (ABC), where both AB and BC were two-character words. In the informative condition, prior contexts provided syntactic information that supported either the first word segmentation (AB-C) or the second word segmentation (A-BC). The neutral condition did not provide syntactic constraint for word-segmentation. The post-target contexts were syntactically consistent with either the first word (AB-C) or the second word (A-BC) segmentation. The results showed that there were higher skipping rates and shorter first-fixation durations on the overlapping ambiguous string region in the informative AB-C condition than those in the informative A-BC condition, whereas no difference between the AB-C and A-BC segmentation types was found in the neutral condition. Readers still made regressions into the overlapping ambiguous string region in the informative condition. These results imply that readers use sentence context information immediately to segment the overlapping ambiguous words, but they do not use the context information fully. The first word (AB) has processing advantages over the second word (BC), suggesting a left-side word advantage.

Informativeness, Imitation, and Language Play: Factors in Word Learning

11 normally developing children of 20 to 24 months of age were taught a nonsense word under informative and increasingly routine conditions. Modelling was the teaching procedure. There were significantly more spontaneous productions of the new word in the informative condition than in the most routine condition for most of the children. This was also true for the familiar words presented. Significantly more language play in the form of repetitions was exhibited for the new word than with familiar words by 10 children, indicating that language play is a strategy for acquiring new words. Only 5 children used imitation of the model as an acquisition strategy. Modest support for the effects of informativeness is provided. Other motivations for word use are discussed as well as clinical implications of these results.