Bulletin Summer 1988

memorial superiority of Chinese characters are different manifestations of the same underlying process. Q: I am told that you are at present using the computer to assist in your research in Chinese and English words. Could you tell us something about this? A: From the point of view of pyschological studies, what we are interested in is not the language itself but rather the inter-relation between language and man. At present I am interested in two things. First, how do we pronounce a word when we see it? Second, how do we read to understand the meaning of a word? Let us look into the question of pronunciation first. In a normal case, it takes us about half a second's time to voice a word. What happens, then, during that half a second's time in our mind? The general belief is that during that instant of time, the man's brain would carry out a process of computation until it is able to reach a conclusion as to how the word should be pronounced. However, so far there has not been any solid theories from Western psychologists with respect to the computational procedure in the man's brain. But I think what I am working on may lead to a logical conclusion to such a procedure. Q: Could we have an example? A: Let us explain this through analysing an English word comprising four letters. When we come upon such a word and try to pronounce it, our brain will, first of all, attempt to find the sound of the first letter. To do so, we will immediately search the vocabulary in our mind to examine all the set of words with four letters beginning with the same letter. If in the set the first letter of the new group of words pronounces the same way, there is no need for further search as the pronunciation of that letter in the word will have been confirmed. If however in the set there are at least two ways in which the first letter can be pronounced, then it is necessary to consider those words that have the identical first two letters. If the first letter of all these words pronounces the same way, then the pronunciation of the first letter will have been confirmed. If not, the test should go on the same way until a conclusion is reached. The finding of the right pronunciation for other letters in the word in question follows the same procedure. Q: Could we have an example using an actual word? A: Let us consider the word ‘TAPE' . Following the procedure that I have just explained, the human brain will first proceed to consider the set of a number of words with four letters beginning with a ‘T' . We will then have Take, Thin, Tape, Tsar . . . , etc. In this group of words, the letter T does not pronounce the same in all instances. This means that we need to look further, with an examination of words with the identical first two letters. The T pronounces the same in Take, Tape, and Tale .... As the pronunciation of T in all these words is the same, there is therefore no need to look further for the pronunciation of it in the word in question. The search for the right pronunciation of the other letters follows the same procedure. Q: How does the computer come into play in your research? A: If we are able to. store a particular person's vocabulary into the computer, we should be able to formulate the computational procedure of how this person pronounces a word. In reality, it will of course be necessary to consider also other related factors, such as how this person learns and collects his vocabulary. It may indeed be a rather complicated process of computation. Q: Can this procedure be applied also to analysing Chinese words? A: I am researching into this at the moment. In theory, the same principle should also apply to the pronunciation of Chinese characters. It is known that about 81% of Chinese characters are the so-called 'phonograms' constituted by the combination of the ‘radical' and the 'phonetic component'. While it may be possible that the word in question and the phonetic 8