维吾尔族与汉族的大学生在汉语歧义词消解中的语境促进效应及反应抑制效应

词汇歧义是语言的普遍现象。在汉语中, 歧义词的种类繁多, 是少数民族学生汉语学习困难的重要原因之一。通过两个实验, 考察在不同加工时间条件下维吾尔族和汉族的大学生在汉语歧义词消解中的语境促进效应及抑制效应。结果发现, 两个民族的大学生均出现了语境促进效应, 但在短时加工条件下, 汉族大学生的语境促进效应显著大于维吾尔族大学生, 在长时加工条件下, 两个民族的大学生的语境促进效应并无显著差异。在短时加工条件下, 仅汉族大学生可以有效地抑制无关信息的干扰; 在长时加工条件下, 两个民族的大学生均可以有效地抑制无关信息的干扰。整个研究表明, 在汉语歧义词消解中, 随着加工时间增加, 维吾尔族大学生的语境促进效应和对无关信息的抑制均可以达到与汉族大学生相近的水平。

Effects of contextual facilitation and inhibitory reaction in lexical ambiguity resolution for the Han and Uyghur nationalities

Uyghur is a specific alphabetic language that differs from Chinese. Thus, mastering the Chinese ambiguity words, such as homonyms, homonyms, and heteronyms, is challenging for Uyghur students. To understand the correct meaning of ambiguity words, one has to suppress irrelevant meanings according to the context. Chinese is a high-context language, where as Uyghur is a low-context language. Thus, the present study investigates the effect of contextual facilitation for the Uyghur and Han nationalities and compares the differences in the inhibitory effect during lexical ambiguity resolution. This study conducted a semantic decision task to investigate lexical ambiguity resolution in 36 Uyghur and 32 Han college students. Twenty-five homonymous ambiguity words with dominant and subordinate meanings were selected as final materials. Eight sentences and two target words were formed in two conditions. In the contextual facilitation condition, four sentences were made and ended with the same ambiguity word. Half of the sentences were biased to the subordinate or ordinate meaning, but the others were unbiased to neither meaning. The target words were semantically related to the ordinary or subordinate meaning of the ambiguity word. In this condition, all target words were semantically consistent with the ambiguity word in each sentence. In the inhibitory condition, two sentences were ended with the ambiguity word; one was biased to the ordinary meaning, and the other was biased to the subordinate meaning. The other two sentences without ambiguity were only different from the former two sentences on the last ambiguity word. The target words were the same with the context facilitation condition but were not semantically consistent with the last words. The participants were asked to decide whether the target words were semantically consistent with the ambiguity words. Thus, the right answers in the facilitation condition were all “yes” and the right answers in the inhibitory condition were all “no”. The SOA of ambiguity and target words is 200 ms in Experiment 1 and 1000 ms in Experiment 2. Results indicated a contextual facilitation effect in Han and Uyghur students in two SOAs, and the size of the effect for the Han students was significantly bigger than that of the Uyghur students in 200 ms. The inhibitory reaction effect was found in two SOAs for the Han students but only found in 1000 ms for Uyghur students. In lexical ambiguity resolution, the ability to extract the accurate meaning and suppress the irrelevant meaning according to the context is important. According to the context, the Uyghur students could activate accurate and irrelevant meanings in the sentence but could not immediately reject the irrelative meaning. The Uyghur students took a long time to inhibit the improper meaning of the ambiguity words.