Bilingualism: Language and Cognition
- Bilingualism: Language and Cognition / Volume 8 / Issue 01 / April 2005, pp 79-83
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2005
- DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1366728904002081 (About DOI), Published online: 04 April 2005
How iconic are Chinese characters?
AbstractThe study explores the notion that some Chinese characters contain pictorial indications of meanings that can be used to help retrieve the referent. Thirty adults with no prior knowledge of Chinese guessed the meanings of twenty Chinese characters by choosing between one of two photographs. Half of the characters were considered to be iconic and the other half was considered to be arbitrary. The proportion of correct guesses for iconic characters was high, but the proportion for arbitrary characters was at chance. These results show a distinction between characters based on the extent to which they have retained aspects of iconicity in reference to their concepts that can direct the reader to their meaning. The results have implications for using pictures to promote the understanding of the orthographic–semantic process in simple Chinese characters. (Received May 26 2004)(Revised August 5 2004) (Accepted September 21 2004) Correspondence: c1 Address for correspondence: Ellen Bialystok, Department of Psychology, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, M3J 1P3, Canada E-mail: ellenb@yorku.ca |
