The Effects of Stroke Order and Radicals on the Knowledge of Japanese Kanji Orthography, Phonology and Semantics

K. Tamaoka & H. Yamada
pp. 199-210.

Abstract

The present study examined how much knowledge of Japanese kanji stroke order and radicals contributes to overall kanji lexical knowledge. Ninety-one undergraduate students, all native Japanese speakers, participated in this study. It was assumed that kanji writing skills (i.e., knowledge of kanji lexical orthography) would be supported by knowledge of precise stroke order sequence. However, a path model for kanji lexical knowledge, based on the results of this study, indicated that this is not true. In fact, the model shows that the only major contribution that knowledge of proper stroke order makes is to one’s knowledge of radicals, and only in a limited way. In contrast, knowledge of kanji radicals directly supports all aspects of the kanji lexicon, namely phonology, orthography and semantics. Consequently, stroke order supports kanji lexical knowledge only indirectly via radicals. The path model also provided an illustration of the close interdependency between knowledge of kanji lexical phonology and knowledge of kanji lexical orthography, which also directly contributes to knowledge of kanji lexical semantics. This study suggests that stroke order plays only a minor role in kanji knowledge on the whole, but that knowledge of radicals serves as a basic element in acquiring kanji lexical knowledge.

Key words: kanji stroke order, radicals, kanji lexical knowledge, path model