Abstract: The present experiments focused on the structure of access representation. Surfacefrequencies, cumulative morpheme frequencies, and semantic transparencies of Chinesetwo-charater words were controlled. When tfansparencies were balanced, thecumulative morpheme frequency effect was found only in high surface frequencywords but not in low frequency words. In the next experiment surface frequencieswere coritrolled and cumulative morpheme frequencies and transparencies were veried.The responses of words with high cumulative frequencies were faster than that withlow cumulative frequencies in transparent words. In opaque words, however, thisresponse tendency was reversed, namely, the responses of words with high cumulativefrequencies were slower than that with low cumulative frequencies. The twoexperiments implied that both word and morpheme units received activation fromvisual input and there were connections between them. These connections werepositive between transparent words and their morphemes, negative between opaquwords and their morphemes, and would be enhanced with surface frequencies.

Key words: access representation, surface frequency, cumulative morpheme frequency, semantic transparency