Effects of early cues on the processing of chinese relative clauses
- We used Chinese prenominal relative clauses (RCs) to test the predictions of two competing accounts of sentence comprehension difficulty: the experience-based account of Levy () and the Dependency Locality Theory (DLT; Gibson, ). Given that in Chinese RCs, a classifier and/or a passive marker BEI can be added to the sentence-initial position, we manipulated the presence/absence of classifiers and the presence/absence of BEI, such that BEI sentences were passivized subject-extracted RCs, and no-BEI sentences were standard object-extracted RCs. We conducted two self-paced reading experiments, using the same critical stimuli but somewhat different filler items. Reading time patterns from both experiments showed facilitative effects of BEI within and beyond RC regions, and delayed facilitative effects of classifiers, suggesting that cues that occur before a clear signal of an upcoming RC can help Chinese comprehenders to anticipate RC structures. The data patterns are not predicted by the DLT, but they are consistent with the predictionsWe used Chinese prenominal relative clauses (RCs) to test the predictions of two competing accounts of sentence comprehension difficulty: the experience-based account of Levy () and the Dependency Locality Theory (DLT; Gibson, ). Given that in Chinese RCs, a classifier and/or a passive marker BEI can be added to the sentence-initial position, we manipulated the presence/absence of classifiers and the presence/absence of BEI, such that BEI sentences were passivized subject-extracted RCs, and no-BEI sentences were standard object-extracted RCs. We conducted two self-paced reading experiments, using the same critical stimuli but somewhat different filler items. Reading time patterns from both experiments showed facilitative effects of BEI within and beyond RC regions, and delayed facilitative effects of classifiers, suggesting that cues that occur before a clear signal of an upcoming RC can help Chinese comprehenders to anticipate RC structures. The data patterns are not predicted by the DLT, but they are consistent with the predictions of experience-based theories.…
Author details: | Fuyun Wu, Elsi Kaiser, Shravan VasishthORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12551 |
ISSN: | 0364-0213 |
ISSN: | 1551-6709 |
Pubmed ID: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29023849 |
Title of parent work (English): | Cognitive science : a multidisciplinary journal of anthropology, artificial intelligence, education, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology ; journal of the Cognitive Science Society |
Subtitle (English): | evidence for experience-based theories |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Place of publishing: | Hoboken |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2017/10/10 |
Publication year: | 2017 |
Release date: | 2021/11/29 |
Tag: | BEI; Chinese; Classifiers; Experience; Relative clause; Storage cost |
Volume: | 42 |
Number of pages: | 33 |
First page: | 1101 |
Last Page: | 1133 |
Funding institution: | New Century Excellent Talents in UniversityProgram for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET) [NCET-12-0907]; National Social Science Foundation of China [13BYY152] |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik |
DDC classification: | 4 Sprache / 41 Linguistik / 410 Linguistik |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Publishing method: | Open Access / Bronze Open-Access |