The pragmatic meanings conveyed by function words in Chinese sentences: An ERP study

Liu, Baolin; Jin, Zhixing; Li, Wenjun; Li, Yanli; Wang, Zhongning

doi:10.1016/j.jneuroling.2009.06.003

Cited by 24 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 39 publications

(47 reference statements)

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“…As a result, this early negativity can be regarded as an N400 effect. The N400 effect is because of the semantic meanings conveyed by the Chinese function words, and it is consistent with the result of Liu et al (2009).…”

Section: Under the Function Word Conditionsupporting

confidence: 79%

“…The semantic processing of Chinese function words suggests that Chinese function words still convey meanings in certain situations. This result is different from Fang's study (Fang et al, 2007), but is consistent with the results of Guo's and Liu's studies and moreover expands on them (Guo et al, 2008;Liu et al, 2009). In Fang's experiment, the researchers considered that the preposition cannot be distinguished from verbs based on their similar ERP responses.…”

Section: Comparison Under the Conditions Of Different Kinds Of Wordscontrasting

confidence: 39%

“…A judgment task after every sentence was employed to ensure that participants paid enough attention to the sentence. A new trial will begin 500 ms after the disappearance of the judgment (Liu et al, 2009(Liu et al, , 2010. Before the experiment, the participants were informed that there were incorrect and correct sentences in the test, but the violation type and the presentation moment were unclear to them.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With the development of the Chinese language, function words are currently undergoing an incomplete grammaticalization from content words; where in this state, they have been given a structural status while concurrently conveying a certain degree of semantic meaning (Qi & Qiu, 2003;Yang & Kuo, 1998). Therefore, semantic processing may be also involved during the processing of Chinese function words, which could be partly observed through our previous study on the pragmatic meanings conveyed by the Chinese function words "CAI" and "JIU" (Liu, Jin, Li, Li, & Wang, 2009). In this paper, we focused on the relationship and difference between Chinese content words and function words to verify the linguistic results above using ERP methods.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Chinese function words grammaticalized from content words: Evidence from ERPs

Liu

Jin

Wang

et al. 2010

Journal of Neurolinguistics

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Section: Under the Function Word Conditionsupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: Comparison Under the Conditions Of Different Kinds Of Wordscontrasting

confidence: 39%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Chinese function words grammaticalized from content words: Evidence from ERPs

Liu

Jin

Wang

et al. 2010

Journal of Neurolinguistics

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“…We want to speculate that the late positivity that is found at prosodic boundaries, known as the Closure Positive Shift (CPS) (Bögels et al, 2010(Bögels et al, , 2011aKerkhofs et al, 2007Kerkhofs et al, , 2008Liu et al, 2009;Mueller et al, 2005;Steinhauer et al, 1999;Wolff et al, 2008), is actually part of the P600 component family. Prosodic breaks help language users structure their input.…”

Section: 4mentioning

confidence: 99%

Getting real about Semantic Illusions: Rethinking the functional role of the P600 in language comprehension

2012

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In traditional theories of language comprehension, syntactic and semantic processing are inextricably linked. This assumption has been challenged by the 'Semantic Illusion Effect' found in studies using Event Related brain Potentials. Semantically anomalous sentences did not produce the expected increase in N400 amplitude but rather one in P600 amplitude. To explain these findings, complex models have been devised in which an independent semantic processing stream can arrive at a sentence interpretation that may differ from the interpretation prescribed by the syntactic structure of the sentence. We review five such multi-stream models and argue that they do not account for the full range of relevant results because they assume that the amplitude of the N400 indexes some form of semantic integration. Based on recent evidence we argue that N400 amplitude might reflect the retrieval of lexical information from memory. On this view, the absence of an N400-effect in Semantic Illusion sentences can be explained in terms of priming. Furthermore, we suggest that semantic integration, which has previously been linked to the N400 component, might be reflected in the P600 instead. When combined, these functional interpretations result in a single-stream account of language processing that can explain all of the Semantic Illusion data.

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An ERP study on whether the P600 can reflect the presence of unexpected phonology

et al. 2011

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In this study, we conducted a new approach to determine whether the P600 could reflect the presence of unexpected phonology. In the experiment, the critical Chinese characters in the poems are either original or substituted by homophones or synonyms. The N400 effect is observed only under the homophonic condition. Late positive shifts are revealed under both homophonic and synonymous conditions, but the amplitude under the homophonic condition is smaller than that under the synonymous condition. The observation of the N400 effect under the homophonic condition indicates that semantic processing occurs in Chinese poem comprehension, while the P600 effect elicited under the homophonic condition is a reflection of unfulfilled semantic expectations. The existence of the late positivity under the synonymous condition reveals that P600 can reflect the presence of unexpected phonology. Interestingly, late positivities under the two conditions both consist of two parts. A discussion ensues wherein these two parts of the late positive shift relate, respectively, to monitoring and resolution processes in language comprehension.

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The pragmatic meanings conveyed by function words in Chinese sentences: An ERP study

Cited by 24 publications

References 39 publications

Chinese function words grammaticalized from content words: Evidence from ERPs

Chinese function words grammaticalized from content words: Evidence from ERPs

Getting real about Semantic Illusions: Rethinking the functional role of the P600 in language comprehension

An ERP study on whether the P600 can reflect the presence of unexpected phonology

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