Figure 2 - uploaded by Karsten Steinhauer
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ERPs for the effect of Structure at the second word position. The 200-ms pre-onset baseline interval is indicated with a gray rectangle. Scalp maps show BEI minus BA (top) and noun two minus BA (bottom) for the P200 and N400 time windows.
Source publication
Mandarin Chinese is typologically unusual among the world’s languages in having flexible word order despite a near absence of inflectional morphology. These features of Mandarin challenge conventional linguistic notions such as subject and object and the divide between syntax and semantics. In the present study, we tested monolingual processing of...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... at the respective second word in NNV, BA and BEI sentences (i.e., contrasting noun two in NNV and the coverbs) showed strong variation in the P200 amplitude of the coverbs BA and BEI, as can be seen in Fig. 2. Direct comparison between ERPs showed that BA elicited a smaller P200 than BEI and noun two in NNV sentences, as can be appreciated in Fig. 2. Noun two further elicited a sizeable N400 component, consistent with word class effects 63 . The smaller P200 for BA was not predicted a priori, but given the striking visual difference in the ...
Context 2
... at the respective second word in NNV, BA and BEI sentences (i.e., contrasting noun two in NNV and the coverbs) showed strong variation in the P200 amplitude of the coverbs BA and BEI, as can be seen in Fig. 2. Direct comparison between ERPs showed that BA elicited a smaller P200 than BEI and noun two in NNV sentences, as can be appreciated in Fig. 2. Noun two further elicited a sizeable N400 component, consistent with word class effects 63 . The smaller P200 for BA was not predicted a priori, but given the striking visual difference in the ERP waveforms, we analyzed single trial amplitudes in the P200 and N400 time windows. The average P200 amplitude for BA sentences was ...
Similar publications
Mandarin Chinese is typologically unusual among the world’s languages in having flexible word order despite a near absence of inflectional morphology. These features of Mandarin challenge conventional linguistic notions such as subject and object and the divide between syntax and semantics. In the present study, we tested monolingual processing of...
Citations
... Mandarin Chinese allows for relatively f lexible word order, resulting in higher reliance on semantic cues such as verb semantics and animacy in noun-noun-verb combinations (P. Li et al., 1992;Wolpert et al., 2023). But with morphological markers BA and BEI inserted between the nouns, proficient Chinese speakers rely more on the morphological markers over semantic cues (P. ...
... But with morphological markers BA and BEI inserted between the nouns, proficient Chinese speakers rely more on the morphological markers over semantic cues (P. Li et al., 1992;Wolpert et al., 2023). Therefore, empirical studies on how Chinese deaf readers resolve semantic and morpho-syntactic cues during BA and BEI sentence comprehension can provide additional crosslinguistic evidence on form-meaning mapping strategies by deaf readers. ...
... With no inf lectional morphology and relatively f lexible word order, the thematic relation in a Chinese noun-noun-verb combination can be ambiguous and oftentimes depends on verb semantic biases as well as noun animacy (P. Li et al., 1992;Wolpert et al., 2023). Despite the different word order arrangement in examples (1b) and (1c), the preferred readings stay the same, given the semantic biases of the verb "grab" and the differences in noun animacy. ...
The current study combined sentence plausibility judgment and self-paced reading tasks to examine the comprehension strategies and processing patterns of Chinese deaf individuals when comprehending written Chinese sentences with syntactic–semantic cue conflicts. Similar to findings from previous crosslinguistic studies on deaf readers, the Chinese deaf readers showed great variability in their comprehension strategies, with only 38% robustly relying on syntactic cues. Regardless of their overall comprehension preferences, the deaf readers all showed additional processing efforts as reflected by longer reading time at the verb regions when they relied on the syntactic cues. Those with less robust reliance on syntactic cues also showed longer reading time at the verb regions even when they relied on the semantic cues, suggesting sensitivity to the syntactic cues regardless of the comprehension strategy. These findings suggest that deaf readers in general endure more processing burden while resolving conflicting syntactic and semantic cues, likely due to their overall high reliance on semantic information during sentence comprehension. Increased processing burden thus may contribute to an overall tendency of over-reliance on semantic cues when comprehending sentences with cue conflicts.
