"A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, June 30, 2010."Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2010.Includes bibliographical references (p. 30-31).This study was to investigate the effect of boundedness on reading Chinese words across
primary grades in Hong Kong. Morphological awareness is crucial for complex word
learning, in which meanings of morphemes are interpreted and stored. As bound morphemes
cannot stand-alone as independent words and they always appear as constituent characters in
complex words, their meanings may not be able to be directly accessible and could only be
accessed when the morphemes are encountered in several complex words with related
meanings. Therefore, increase in language exposure was hypothesized to allow a person to
retrieve meanings of bound morphemes and store them as individual words. This was
investigated by lexical decision task, reading aloud of complex words and reading aloud of
constituent morphemes in the present study. Results of t-tests showed that there was effect of
boundedness on accuracy rate in reading aloud complex words and constituent morphemes,
but not in lexical decision task. Implications of the findings on the development of word
reading would be discussed. Mental representations of morpheme meanings became clearer
in higher grades for both bound and free morphemes due to increased language exposure.published_or_final_versionSpeech and Hearing SciencesBachelorBachelor of Science in Speech and Hearing Science
