Dissertation
Morphological encoding of Mandarin Chinese: evidence from Chinese disyllabic compound words
On the 2nd of July, Jiaqi Wang successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Jiaqi on this achievement!
- Author
- Jiaqi Wang
- Date
- 02 July 2025
- Links
- Leiden University Repository
This dissertation focuses on the central research question of how Mandarin compound words are represented during language production. Specifically, it examines whether compound words are stored in the mental lexicon in a decomposed or holistic manner. If decomposition occurs during production, at what level does it take place? To explore the representation of Mandarin compound words during lexical selection, this dissertation investigates two primary hypotheses: the morphological decomposition hypothesis and the full-listing hypothesis. The former posits that compound words are represented in the mental lexicon through their constituent morphemes, which play a role in lexical retrieval. In contrast, the latter asserts that compound words are stored as whole units, negating the involvement of morphemes in lexical retrieval. The aim of this research is to uncover how Mandarin Chinese compound words are represented at the level of lexical selection during speech production.