Japanese texts presented in mixed script, a combination of Chinese characters (kanji) and syllabic kana graphs, are typically processed faster than texts written solely in kana. Previous research...Show moreJapanese texts presented in mixed script, a combination of Chinese characters (kanji) and syllabic kana graphs, are typically processed faster than texts written solely in kana. Previous research has identified a variety of phenomena that could explain this difference, including script familiarity effects as well as possibly more fundamental differences in the ways these two orthographic styles are processed. A number of authors have pointed out that in mixed script, the boundaries between the visually distinct kanji and kana scripts can be used as an indicator of the boundaries between bunsetsu, units comprised of an independent word and any clitics that may follow it. This thesis assesses to what extent this particular characteristic of mixed script can explain the difference in reading speed, based on an analysis of previous empirical research in the field and a new experiment. In this experiment, 40 Japanese native speaker informants were tasked with reading 4 texts of different types, presented in either mixed script or kana and either with or without spacing between bunsetsu. Reading time measurements show a large overlap between the effects of bunsetsu spacing and mixed script, pointing to the presence of visually distinct script boundaries in mixed script as the main (but not the only) cause of the difference in reading speed between mixed script text and kana text. Considerable differences were found between the 4 stimulus texts, and an analysis of these differences reveals how the effects of this feature of mixed script may fluctuate depending on the characteristics of the text.Show less
