The Morphological Awareness Of Pictophonetic Characters: An Experimental Study On Learners Of Chinese As A Second Language

This study explored the cues in pictophonetic characters and its development among learners of Chinese as a second language. In this experimental, there are four sorts of pictophonetic characters: 10 were morphologically transparent familiar characters, and 10 were morphologically transparent new characters, and 10 were morphologically opaque familiar characters, and 10 were morphologically transparent new characters. The subject were asked to write down the semantic radical for 40 pictophonetic characters of different sorts, and to select the right meaning for 40 pictophonetic characters. The result show that the subject performed much better on morphologically transparent characters than on morphologically opaque ones, so did on familiar characters. There are differences in subjects of different countries: the morphological awareness of the subjects who were from Chinese-character-used countries were better than which of the subjects who were from Chinese-character-not -used countries when they were in grade one, But there were little difference when they were in grade two and grade three. The latter developed very rapidly, on the contrary, the former developed slowly.