Abstract

In Korean written language there are some Chinese homophones which have different spelling from another in Chinese characters but have the same sound and spelling as another in Korean language. So each of Chinese homophone is orthographically unambiguous but is phonologically ambiguous to Korean. A word association test about Chinese homophones and two experiments were perfonned to examine the nature of lexical access in the processing of Chinese homophone with Korean subjects. Subjects made lexical decisions to Korean target words that were associates of the orthographically related meaning or phonologically related meaning of a Chinese homophone prime. Experiment 1 explored the time course of activation of the two meanings at 200-ms SOA and lOO0-ms SOA, showing that two meanings were retrieved simultaneously and the access to lexical meaning was mediated by phonological representation. Subsequent to its retrieval, activation of the phonologically related meaning decreased a little more. Experiment2 indicated that cost by attentional allocation was possible only about phonologically related meaning. At long SOA controlled processing appeared to be active hut was difficult to control about orthographically related meaning.