Skip to main content

Getting at the Sound and Meaning of Logographic and Alphabetic Scripts

  • Chapter
Scripts and Literacy

Part of the book series: Neuropsychology and Cognition ((NPCO,volume 7))

Abstract

There are three elements involved in written language, namely script, sound, and meaning. Differences between ideographic and alphabetic languages can be expressed in terms of relationships between these elements. This paper will review some such differences with particular reference to Chinese and English. Most of the studies referred to are made in laboratory conditions and their immediate applied implications may not be obvious, but there are indications of differences in the areas of reading and aphasia.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  • Anderson, J.R.: 1983, ‘A spreading activation theory of memory’ Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 22: 261–295.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Benson, F. and Geschwing, N.: 1969, ‘The alexias’, in P.J. Vinken and G.W. Bruyn (eds.) Handbook of Clinical Neurology (Volume 4: Disorders of Speech, Perception, and Symbolic Behaviour), North Holland, Amsterdam.

    Google Scholar 

  • Besner, D. and Colheart, M.: 1979, ‘Ideographic and alphabetic processing in skilled reading of English’ Neuropsychologia 17: 467–472.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Biederman, I. and Tsao, Y.C.: 1979, ‘On processing Chinese ideographs and English words: Some implications from Stroop-test results’ Cognitive Psychology 11: 125–132.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boucher and Osgood, C.E.: 1969, ‘The Pollyyanna hypothesis’ Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 8: 1–8.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chen, M.J.: 1981, ‘Directional scanning of visual displays: a study with Chinese subjects’ Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 12: 252–271.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chen, M.J., Braithwaite, V., and Huang, J.T.: 1982, ‘Attributes of intelligent behaviour: Perceived relevance and difficulty by Australian and Chinese students’ Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 13: 139–156.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ellis, N.C. and Hennelly, R.A.: 1980, ‘A bilingual word-length effect: Implications for intelligence testing and the relative ease of mental calculation in Welsh and English’ British Journal of Psychology 71: 43–51.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Feldman, L.B. and Turvey, M.T.: 1980, ‘Words written in kana are named faster than the same words written in kani’ Language and Speech 23: 141–147.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foltz, G.S., Poltrock, S.E., and Potts, G.R.: 1984, ‘Mental comparison of size and magnitude: Size congruity effects’ Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory, and Cognition 10: 442–453.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hasuike, R., Tzeng, OIL., and Hung, D.L.: 1986, ‘Script effects and cerebral lateralization: The case of Chinese characters’, in J. Vaid (ed.) Language Processing in Bilinguals: Psycholinguistic and Neurolinguistic Perspectives Erlbaum, Hillsdale, N.J.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ho, S.K. and Hoosain, R.: 1989, ‘Right hemisphere advantage in lexical decision with two-character Chinese words’ Brain and Language 37: 606–615.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoosain, R.: 1984, ‘Experiments on digit spans in the Chinese and English languages’, in H.S.R. Kao and R. Hoosain (eds.) Psychological Studies of the Chinese Language Chinese Language Society of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoosain, R.: 1986, ‘Psychological and orthographic variables for translation asymmetry’, in H.S.R. Kao and R. Hoosain (eds.) Linguistics Psychology and the Chinese Language University of Hong Kong Centre of Asian Studies, Hong Kong.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoosain, R. and Osgood, C.E.: 1983, ‘Processing times for Chinese and English words’ Perception and Psychophysics 34: 573–577.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Huang, C.Y.: 1984, ‘Reading and writing disorders in Chinese-Some theoretical issues’, in H.S.R. Kao and R. Hoosain (eds.) Psychological Studies of the Chinese Language Chinese Language Society of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hung, D.L. and Tzeng, O.J.L.: 1981, ‘Orthographic variations and visual information processing’ Psychological Bulletin 90: 377–414.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hung, D.L., Tzeng, O.J.L., Salzman, B., and Dreher, J.: 1984, ‘A critical evaluation of the horse-racing model of skilled reading’, in H.S.R. Kao and R. Hoosain (eds.) Psychological Studies of the Chinese Language Chinese Language Society of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keatley, C.W.: 1988, ‘Facilitation effects in the primed lexical decision task within and across language. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Hong Kong.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuo, W.F.: 1978, ‘A preliminary study of reading disability in the Republic in China’ Collected Papers (National Taiwan Normal University) 20: 57–78.

    Google Scholar 

  • Li, X.T., Hu, C.Q., Zhu, Y.L., Song, Z.W., and Li, Y.: 1986, ‘Language disorders in patients with cerebral vascular accidents’, in H.S.R. Kao and R. Hoosain (eds.) Linguistics Psychology and the Chinese Language Hong Kong University Centre of Asian Studies, Hong Kong.

    Google Scholar 

  • Liu, I.M.: 1983, ‘Cueing function of fragments of Chinese characters in reading’ Acta Psychologica Taiwanica 2: 85–90.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lyman, R.S., Kwan, S.T., and Chao, W.H.: 1938, ‘Left occipital-parietal brain tumour with observations on alexia and agraphia in Chinese and in English’ The Chinese Medical Journal 54: 491–515.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCusker, L.X., Hillinger, M.L., and Bias, R.G.: 1981, ‘Phonological recoding and reading’ Psychological Bulletin 89: 214–245.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miles, W.R. and Shen, E.: 1925, ‘Photographic recoding of eye movements in the reading of Chinese in vertical and horizontal axes: Method and preliminary results’ Journal of Experimental Psychology 8: 344–362.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Naeser, M.A. and Chan, S.W.C.: 1980, ‘Case study of Chinese aphasia with the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination’ Neuropsychologia 18: 389–410.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Naveh-Benjamin, M. and Ayers, T.J.: 1986, ‘Digit span, reading rate, and linguistic relativity’ The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 38: 739–751.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Osgood, C.E. and Hoosain, R.: 1983, ‘Pollyanna II: Two types of negativity’, The Journal of Psychology, 151–160.

    Google Scholar 

  • Osgood, C.E., May, W.H., and Miron, M.S.: 1975, Cross-cultural Universals of Affective Meaning, University of Illinois Press, Urbana.

    Google Scholar 

  • Paradis, M., Hagiwara, H., and Hildebrandt, N.: 1985, Neurolinguistic Aspects of the Japanese Writing System, Academic Press, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peng, D.L., Orchard, L.N., and Stern, J.A.: 1983, ‘Evaluation of eye movement variables of Chinese and American readers’ Pavlovian Journal of Biological Sciences 18: 94–102.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rozin, P., Poritzky, S., and Sotsky, R.: 1971, ‘American children with reading problems can easily learn to read English represented in Chinese characters’ Science 171: 1264–1267.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sergent, J.: 1983, ‘Role of input in visual hemispheric asymmetries’, Psychological Bulletin 93: 481–512.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shen, E.C.: 1927, ‘An analysis of eye movements in the reading of Chinese’, Journal of Experimental Psychology 20: 158–183.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stern, J.A.: 1978, ‘Eye movements, reading, and cognition’, in J.W. Senders, D.F. Fisher, and R.A. Monty (eds.) Eye Movements and the Higher Psychological Functions Erlbaum, Hillsdale, N.J.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stevenson, H.W., Stigler, J.W., Lucker, G.W., and Lee, S.Y.: 1982 ‘Reading disabilities: The case of Chinese, Japanese, and English’, Child Development 53: 1164–1181.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stigler, J.W., Lee, S.Y., and Stevenson, H.W.: 1986, ‘Digit memory in Chinese and English: Evidence for a temporally limited store’, Cognition 24: 1–20.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stroop, J.R.: 1935, ‘Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions’, Journal of Experimental Psychology 18: 643–662.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sun, F. C. and Stark, L.: 1986, ‘The analysis of reading eye movements in Chinese and English-an approach to study visual information processing in the central nervous system’. Paper presented at the Shanghai Symposium on Neuroscience. Shanghai, April.

    Google Scholar 

  • Treiman, R.A., Baron, J., and Luk, K.: 1981, ‘Speech recoding in silent reading: A comparison of Chinese and English’ Journal of Chinese Linguistics 9: 116–125.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tzeng, O.J.L., Hung, D.L., Chen, S., Wu, J., and Hsi, M.S.: 1986, ‘Processing Chinese logographs by Chinese brain damaged patients’, in H.S.R. Kao, G.P. van Galen, and R. Hoosain (eds.) Graphonomics: Contemporary Research in Handwriting North Holland, Amsterdam.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tzeng, O.J.L., Hung, D.L., and Wang, W.S.-Y.: 1977, ‘Speech recoding in reading Chinese characters’ Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory 3: 621–630.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tzeng, O.J.L. and Wang, W.S.-Y.: 1983, ‘The first two R’s’ American Scientist 71: 238–243.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhu, Y.L., Song, Z.W., Li,Y., Li, X.T., and Hu, C.Q.: 1986, ‘Language functions of subcortical structures’, in H.S.R. Kao and R. Hoosain (eds.) Linguistics Psychology and the Chinese Language Hong Kong University Centre of Asian Studies, Hong Kong.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 1995 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Hoosain, R. (1995). Getting at the Sound and Meaning of Logographic and Alphabetic Scripts. In: Taylor, I., Olson, D.R. (eds) Scripts and Literacy. Neuropsychology and Cognition, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1162-1_9

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1162-1_9

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-010-4506-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-011-1162-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics