The Study On Lexical Access Of Chinese Emotional Compound Words

Chinese compound words have always been an important research field in linguistic psychology.Since the introduction of the concept of "morpheme",it has become the focus of the research on lexical access.The establishment of the theoretical model of lexical access cannot be separated from morpheme.How does emotional valence,as a semantic attribute of morphemes,affect lexical access? What role does morpheme play in the lexical access of emotional compound words? There is no satisfactory answer for the moment.Existing lexical access models lack emotional factors,and researches on emotional words are rarely conducted from the perspective of lexical access.From the perspective of the cognitive mechanism of compound words access,this study used low-frequency compound words as the material,strictly controled the linguistic and emotional variables of the material,and conducted three behavioral experiments to systematically explore the lexical access mechanism of Chinese emotional compound words.In the first experiment,a 2 factor(semantic transparency: transparent,opaque)×3 factor(emotional valence: positive,negative,and neutral words)was designed.A lexical judgment task was used to investigate the effect of semantic transparency on lexical access of two-word emotional compound words.The results showed that the interaction between transparency and emotional valence was significant.The emotional valence effect only appeared in the opaque words,and the response of the opaque neutral words was slower than that of the opaque positive words and negative words.Experiment 2 consisted of two sub-experiments,both of which were 2(consistency between the first morpheme’s affective valence and the whole word’s affective valence:consistent and inconsistent)×2(positive and negative).To explore the influence of the first morpheme and the last morpheme emotional valence on lexical access of semantically transparent emotional compound words.The effects of the first morpheme’s affective valence on the lexical accessibility of semantically transparent and semantically opaque emotional compounds were investigated.The results showed that the congruence effect of the semantically transparent emotional compound words was significant.When the first morpheme and the whole word emotional valence were inconsistent,the response time of lexical judgment was slower.The main effect of consistency of opaque words was not significant,and the emotional information of the first morpheme did not affect the lexical access of opaque words.Experiment 3 used the experimental paradigm of pre-masking repeated priming and included two sub-experiments,both of which were 3 factors: 2(consistent and inconsistent)×2(positive and negative)×3(priming type: morpheme,whole word,and pattern).The results showed that the three factors of consistency,emotional valence and priming type had significant interaction,and the priming quantity of whole word priming was greater than that of morpheme priming.Under the priming conditions of first morpheme and pattern priming conditions,the positive words with the same first morpheme and whole word emotional valence responded slower than the positive words with the different first morpheme.When the second morpheme is primed and the whole word is primed,the response of the second morpheme and the whole word is faster than that of the inconsistent words.Based on the above experimental results,the following conclusions are drawn.(1)Transparency effect exists in the lexical access of emotional compound words,and the semantic representation of emotional compound words is affected by morphemes.(2)Both morpheme representation and whole word representation exist in the lexical access process of emotional compound words.Lexical access of semantically opaque emotional words tends to whole word representation and emotional information is derived from whole words.The emotional information of morphemes affects the lexical access of semantically transparent emotional compounds.(3)The first morpheme and the second morpheme have different effects on the lexical access of semantic transparent emotional compound words.Lexical access of compound words is disrupted when the first morpheme has the same emotional valence as the whole word,while lexical access is promoted when the second morpheme has the same emotional valence as the whole word.