The interpretation of Chinese relative clauses has become of significant interest in sentence processing research, since some studies found that Chinese comprehension patterns violate the well-known universal subject ...The interpretation of Chinese relative clauses has become of significant interest in sentence processing research, since some studies found that Chinese comprehension patterns violate the well-known universal subject relatives preference proposed by NAPH theory and proved by cross-linguistic studies. The current study uses the neuropsychological measure of ERP. It supports such a language-specific phenomenon, with the results showing that both subject- and object- modifying subject relatives eliciting larger ERP components than object relatives. The results suggest that object relatives are easier to process than subject relatives at both modifying positions, challenging the claim of universal subject preference for all languages. In addition, this study casts doubts on CWO and working memory-based DLT models despite results being compatible with them, and concludes that none of the current models are comprehensive enough to account for the data. Finally, this study offers a piece of evidence for the garden path effect caused by the surface NVN word order in the Chinese relative clause. All in all, this study adds to the evidence that processing preference is not universal. It contributes to a comprehensive model of how complex structures are processed.展开更多
基金the project of"The Processing of Chinese Relative Clauses"at the University of Arizona with No.10-0363-02supported in part by the project of Superiority Subject in Jiangsu Province(20110101)the EGI corporation for its support of this research
文摘The interpretation of Chinese relative clauses has become of significant interest in sentence processing research, since some studies found that Chinese comprehension patterns violate the well-known universal subject relatives preference proposed by NAPH theory and proved by cross-linguistic studies. The current study uses the neuropsychological measure of ERP. It supports such a language-specific phenomenon, with the results showing that both subject- and object- modifying subject relatives eliciting larger ERP components than object relatives. The results suggest that object relatives are easier to process than subject relatives at both modifying positions, challenging the claim of universal subject preference for all languages. In addition, this study casts doubts on CWO and working memory-based DLT models despite results being compatible with them, and concludes that none of the current models are comprehensive enough to account for the data. Finally, this study offers a piece of evidence for the garden path effect caused by the surface NVN word order in the Chinese relative clause. All in all, this study adds to the evidence that processing preference is not universal. It contributes to a comprehensive model of how complex structures are processed.
