The current study examined whether or not lexical access is influenced by detailed phonological features during the silent reading of Chinese sentences. We used two types of two-character target words (Mandarin sandhi-tone and base-tone). The first characters of the words in the sandhi-tone condition had a tonal alternation, but no tonal alternation was involved in the base-tone condition. Recordings of eye movements revealed that native Mandarin Chinese readers viewed the base-tone target words more briefly than the sandhi-tone target words when they were infrequent. Such articulation-specific effects on visual word processing, however, diminished for frequent words. We suggest that a conflict in tonal representation at a character/morpheme level and at a word level induces prolongation in fixation duration on infrequent sandhi-tone words, and conclude that these tonal effects appear to reflect articulation simulation of words during the silent reading of Chinese sentences.

目前的研究调查了在无声阅读中文句子时，词汇访问是否受到详细的语音特征的影响。我们使用了两种类型的两个字符的目标词（普通话三音和基音）。在“沙调”语调条件下，单词的第一个字符具有音调交替，但​​在基音条件下不涉及音调交替。眼动记录显示，与普通话相比，汉语普通话阅读者在不经常使用基础音调目标词时看得更简短。但是，对于频繁的单词，这种针对视觉单词处理的特定于发音的效果会减弱。我们建议，在字符/语素级别和单词级别的音调表示形式上的冲突会导致不常见的沙地语单词的注音持续时间延长，