Abstract: Indian is a special country which has two official languages. Hindi and English are both spaced alphabetic languages, Hindi is also their mother language. In the present study, we investigate the role of space information through two-official-language readers. We examine how word discriminability affect the pattern of eye movements when reading unspaced text in two alphabetic languages. We carried out three conditions (1) normally condition, (2) alternating gray unspaced condition, (3) unspaced condition. We therefore predict that, (1) the unspaced text may have a greater interfered effect for Hindi and English reading, (2) alternating gray unspaced condition is obvious visual cue for readers during reading. To study the effect of word segmentation on Hindi-English bilinguals’ reading, 25 Indian University students who were bilinguals of Hindi-English participated in the research, their eye movements were recorded with SR research EyeLink 2000 eyetracker. In Experiment 1，Hindi sentences were constructed with 3 types of spacing: (1) normally written sentences, (2) alternating gray unspaced sentences, (3) unspaced sentences. In Experiment 2, we used three types of sentences as in Experiment 1 to make three different types of English sentences to investigate the role of space information in English reading. The trends of data from two experiments were very similar. Global fixation counts and total reading time measures indicated that (1) The efficiency of Hindi reading under the normally is better than alternating gray unspaced condition and unspaced condition; (2) The efficiency of English reading under the normally is best, alternating gray unspaced condition is better than unspaced condition. The results of the present study suggested that Spacing information plays an important role for both Hindi and English reading. Under the alternating gray unspaced condition and unspaced conditionis, the speed of English reading reduce much more than Hindi reading. The role of spacing information is effected by language traits.

Key words: word segmentation, Hindi, English, eye movements

摘要： 以25名印-英双语者为被试，采用EyeLink2000眼动仪，探讨词切分对印-英双语者阅读的影响。实验一要求被试阅读印地语句子，实验二要求被试阅读英语句子，词切分方式有三种：正常条件、无空格隔词加灰条件和无空格条件。结果发现：（1）对印-英双语者阅读自己的两种官方语言来说，空格因素在其阅读中发挥着积极作用，删除空格会明显影响他们的阅读；（2）在无空格隔词加灰条件和无空格条件下，印-英双语者阅读英语时下降的速度显著低于阅读印地语的，这表明空格因素的作用会受语言特点的制约。

关键词: 词切分, 印地语, 英语, 眼动