TY - JOUR A1 - Yue, Jinxing A1 - Alter, Kai-Uwe A1 - Howard, David A1 - Bastiaanse, Roelien T1 - Early access to lexical-level phonological representations of Mandarin word-forms BT - evidence from auditory N1 habituation JF - Language, cognition and neuroscience N2 - An auditory habituation design was used to investigate whether lexical-level phonological representations in the brain can be rapidly accessed after the onset of a spoken word. We studied the N1 component of the auditory event-related electrical potential, and measured the amplitude decrements of N1 associated with the repetition of a monosyllabic tone word and an acoustically similar pseudo-word in Mandarin Chinese. Effects related to the contrastive onset consonants were controlled for by introducing two control words. We show that repeated pseudo-words consistently elicit greater amplitude decrements in N1 than real words. Furthermore, this lexicality effect is free from sensory fatigue or rapid learning of the pseudo-word. These results suggest that a lexical-level phonological representation of a spoken word can be accessed as early as 110ms after the onset of the word-form. KW - Auditory N1 KW - short-term habituation KW - spoken word KW - Mandarin Chinese KW - language KW - event-related potential KW - lexical access Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2017.1290261 SN - 2327-3798 SN - 2327-3801 VL - 32 IS - 9 SP - 1148 EP - 1163 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Chen, Hui-Ching A1 - Szendroi, Krizsta A1 - Crain, Stephen A1 - Höhle, Barbara T1 - Understanding Prosodic Focus Marking in Mandarin Chinese BT - Data from Children and Adults JF - Journal of Psycholinguistic Research N2 - This study investigated whether Mandarin speakers interpret prosodic information as focus markers in a sentence-picture verification task. Previous production studies have shown that both Mandarin-speaking adults and Mandarin-speaking children mark focus by prosodic information (Ouyang and Kaiser in Lang Cogn Neurosc 30(1-2):57-72, 2014; Yang and Chen in Prosodic focus marking in Chinese four-and eight-year-olds, 2014). However, while prosodic focus marking did not seem to affect sentence comprehension in adults Mandarin-speaking children showed enhanced sentence comprehension when the sentence focus was marked by prosodic information in a previous study (Chen in Appl Psycholinguist 19(4):553-582, 1998). The present study revisited this difference between Mandarin speaking adults and children by applying a newly designed task that tested the use of prosodic information to identify the sentence focus. No evidence was obtained that Mandarin-speaking children (as young as 3years of age) adhered more strongly to prosodic information than adults but that word order was the strongest cue for their focus interpretation. Our findings support the view that children attune to the specific means of information structure marking in their ambient language at an early age. KW - Focus KW - Prosody KW - Language acquisition KW - Mandarin Chinese KW - Information structure Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-018-9580-9 SN - 0090-6905 SN - 1573-6555 VL - 48 IS - 1 SP - 19 EP - 32 PB - Springer CY - New York ER - TY - GEN A1 - Cheng, Lisa Lai-Shen A1 - Vicente, Luis T1 - Verb doubling in Mandarin Chinese T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - This article examines two so-far-understudied verb doubling constructions in Mandarin Chinese, viz., verb doubling clefts and verb doubling lian…dou. We show that these constructions have the same internal syntax as regular clefts and lian…dou sentences, the doubling effect being epiphenomenal; therefore, we classify them as subtypes of the general cleft and lian…dou constructions, respectively, rather than as independent constructions. Additionally, we also show that, as in many other languages with comparable constructions, the two instances of the verb are part of a single movement chain, which has the peculiarity of allowing Spell-Out of more than one link. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 629 KW - Mandarin Chinese KW - verb doubling KW - verb movement KW - cleft KW - lian…dou Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-436880 SN - 1866-8364 IS - 629 SP - 1 EP - 37 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bruening, Benjamin A1 - Tran, Thuan T1 - The nature of the passive, with an analysis of Vietnamese JF - Lingua : international review of general linguistics N2 - We attempt to clarify a great deal of confusion in the literature on what a passive is, and what counts as a passive in different languages. We do this through a detailed investigation of what has been identified as a passive in Vietnamese, sentences with the morphemes bi and duoc. We also compare these to Mandarin Chinese bei. We show that these morphemes are not passive at all: like English auxiliaries, they may occur with either an active complement or a passive one. We clarify this point and what it means to be a passive. Second, sentences with these morphemes and the corresponding sentences without them are truth-conditionally equivalent. We show that the extra meaning they convey is a type of projective, or not-at-issue, meaning that is separate from the at-issue content of the sentence. We provide a detailed syntactic and semantic analysis of Vietnamese, and give arguments for this analysis. We propose that there is no movement in Vietnamese, but there is in Chinese, and this difference accounts for differences between the two languages. We also clarify what agent-oriented adverbs of the 'deliberately' type show, and draw conclusions about English get passives and tough constructions. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. KW - Passive KW - Vietnamese KW - Mandarin Chinese KW - Projective meaning KW - Agent-oriented adverbs Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2015.07.008 SN - 0024-3841 SN - 1872-6135 VL - 165 SP - 133 EP - 172 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Yue, Jinxing A1 - Bastiaanse, Roelien A1 - Alter, Kai T1 - Cortical plasticity induced by rapid Hebbian learning of novel tonal word-forms: Evidence from mismatch negativity JF - Brain & language : a journal of the neurobiology of language N2 - Although several experiments reported rapid cortical plasticity induced by passive exposure to novel segmental patterns, few studies have devoted attention to the neural dynamics during the rapid learning of novel tonal word-forms in tonal languages, such as Chinese. In the current study, native speakers of Mandarin Chinese were exposed to acoustically matched real and novel segment-tone patterns. By recording their Mismatch Negativity (MMN) responses (an ERP indicator of long-term memory traces for spoken words), we found enhanced MMNs to the novel word-forms over the left-hemispheric region in the late exposure phase relative to the early exposure phase. In contrast, no significant changes were identified in MMN responses to the real word during familiarisation. Our results suggest a rapid Hebbian learning mechanism in the human neocortex which develops long-term memory traces for a novel segment-tone pattern by establishing new associations between the segmental and tonal representations. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. KW - Language KW - Rapid learning KW - Hebbian learning KW - Event-related potential KW - Novel word KW - Mismatch Negativity (MMN) KW - Oddball paradigm KW - Lexical tone KW - Mandarin Chinese Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2014.09.007 SN - 0093-934X SN - 1090-2155 VL - 139 SP - 10 EP - 22 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Cheng, Lisa Lai-Shen A1 - Vicente, Luis T1 - Verb doubling in Mandarin Chinese JF - Journal of East Asian linguistics N2 - This article examines two so-far-understudied verb doubling constructions in Mandarin Chinese, viz., verb doubling clefts and verb doubling lianaEuro broken vertical bar dou. We show that these constructions have the same internal syntax as regular clefts and lianaEuro broken vertical bar dou sentences, the doubling effect being epiphenomenal; therefore, we classify them as subtypes of the general cleft and lianaEuro broken vertical bar dou constructions, respectively, rather than as independent constructions. Additionally, we also show that, as in many other languages with comparable constructions, the two instances of the verb are part of a single movement chain, which has the peculiarity of allowing Spell-Out of more than one link. KW - Mandarin Chinese KW - Verb doubling KW - Verb movement KW - Cleft KW - lian ... dou Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-012-9095-6 SN - 0925-8558 VL - 22 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 37 PB - Springer CY - Dordrecht ER -