Pre-lexical phonological processing in reading Chinese characters: An ERP study

• Radical interference effect is found for N170, P200 and N400 responses.
• Sinogram (i.e. Chinese character) interference effect is found for the N400 response.
• The pronunciations of radicals are activated prior to those of their host sinograms.
• P200 is related to the phonological processing of radicals in reading Chinese.
• Our findings promote the understanding of regularity and consistency effects.

Sinograms (i.e., Chinese characters) are usually composed of radicals which do not correspond to phonemes; instead, some radicals can occur as freestanding sinograms and have their own pronunciations. Previous research has demonstrated that the pronunciations of both radicals and sinograms are activated in reading low-frequency sinograms. However, the relative timing of activation between sinogram pronunciation and radical pronunciation has not been addressed. We examine this issue by comparing the interference effects exerted by two types of primes on the targets in an event-related potential (ERP) experiment: RADICAL-RELATED primes, which are homophonic with a radical embedded in the targets; and SINOGRAM-RELATED primes, which are homophonic with the targets. A radical interference effect is found for N170, P200 and N400 responses, whereas a sinogram interference effect is found only for N400. Our findings demonstrate that the pronunciations of radicals are activated pre-lexically, i.e., prior to those of their host sinograms. The role of this early sub-lexical phonology is discussed within an interactive activation framework, wherein two types of pronunciations—(1) the radical pronunciations and (2) the set of pronunciations associated with the sinogram’s orthographical neighbors—are both present and operate interactively.