Abstract: Using a naming task, this experiment investigated the effects of phonological and tonal relations between phonetic radicals and whole characters on the processing of pictophonetic characters. The materials were 180 pictophonetic characters. The results showed that there was a "regularity effect" in the processing of pictophonetic characters. The naming latencies were short if the phonetic radicals and whole characters shared the same pronounciations. There was also a "tonal effect" in processing pictophonetic characters. The naming responses were fast if the phonetic radicals and whole characters had the same tones, and this effect was not influnced by word frequency. These results supported the view that there is automatic activition of sub lexical components in phonological processing of Chinese pictophonetic characters.

Key words: phonetic radicals, whole characters, phonological relations, tonal relations