The subject-relative advantage in Chinese: Evidence for expectation-based processing

Jäger, Lena A.; Chen, Zhong; Qiang, Li; Lin, Chien-Jer Charles; Vasishth, Shravan

doi:10.1016/j.jml.2014.10.005

Cited by 78 publications

(94 citation statements)

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“…Some studies of Korean and Japanese, for example, have reported a subject processing advantage (Kanno & Nakamura, 2001;Kwon, 2008;Kwon, Kluender, Kutas, & Polinsky, 2010, Kwon et al, 2013Ishizuka, Nakatani, & Gibson, 2003;Miyamoto & Nakamura, 2003;Ueno & Garnsey, 2008), consistent with the predictions of phrase structure theories. On the other hand, research on Basque (Carreiras, Dunabeitia, Vergara, De La CruzPavia, & Laka, 2010), as well as some (but not all) studies of Chinese have reported an object RC processing advantage (Chen, Ning, Bi, & Dunlap, 2008;Gibson & Wu, 2013;Hsiao & Gibson, 2003;Jäger, Chen, Li, Lin, & Vasishth, 2015;Lin & Garnsey, 2007;Qiao, Shen, & Forster, 2012, but see Lin & Bever, 2006, Vasishth, Chen, Li, & Guo, 2013, consistent with the predictions of memory-based theories (see also Özge, Marinis, & Zeyrek, 2015, for discussion). The fact that cross-linguistic evidence does not unilaterally point to a subject RC processing advantage calls into question phrase structure theories, which, on theoretical grounds, predict this processing advantage to be universal.…”

Section: Syntactic Complexity and Comprehension Difficultymentioning

confidence: 63%

Cross-linguistic psycholinguistics and its critical role in theory development: early beginnings and recent advances

Norcliffe

Harris

Jaeger

2015

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

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Recent years have seen a small but growing body of psycholinguistic research focused on typologically diverse languages. This represents an important development for the field, where theorising is still largely guided by the often implicit assumption of universality. This paper introduces a special issue of Language, Cognition and Neuroscience devoted to the topic of cross-linguistic and field-based approaches to the study of psycholinguistics. The papers in this issue draw on data from a variety of genetically and areally divergent languages, to address questions in the production and comprehension of phonology, morphology, words, and sentences. To contextualise these studies, we provide an overview of the field of cross-linguistic psycholinguistics, from its early beginnings to the present day, highlighting instances where cross-linguistic data have significantly contributed to psycholinguistic theorising

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Section: Syntactic Complexity and Comprehension Difficultymentioning

confidence: 63%

Cross-linguistic psycholinguistics and its critical role in theory development: early beginnings and recent advances

Norcliffe

Harris

Jaeger

2015

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Stoops, Luke, & Christianson, 2014, on the importance of animacy information in Russian processing). This approach represents a novel contribution to the current debate in the literature as to whether SRCs or ORCs are easier to process in Chinese (Chen et al, 2006; Gibson & Wu, 2011;Jäger et al, 2015;Vasishth et al, 2013).The results showed that plausibility alone significantly affected whole sentence reading times. Readers spent less time reading overall when processing plausible sentences compared to implausible sentences, regardless of relative clause structure.…”

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confidence: 94%

“…Specifically, we expect a significantly shorter processing time for ORC at the second noun, relativizer de, and main clause verb if working memory capacity affects the retrieval of the subject/object in relative clauses (Gibson, 1998;Hsiao & Gibson, 2003). On the other hand, we expect faster processing of SRCs if frequency and experience with relative clauses dominate readers' processing (Hsiao & MacDonald, 2013;Jäger et al, 2015;Lin & Bever, 2006;Vasishth et al, 2013). We will examine these effects at the relativizer de, second noun, and main clause verb regions.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Previous research on Chinese relative clause processing has returned three basic results. As detailed in the introduction, some studies claim to show that subject-relative clauses (SRCs) are easier to process and comprehend, as predicted by experience-based processing theories (e.g., Jäger et al, 2015;Lin & Bever, 2006;Vasishth et al, 2013). Other studies claim to show that object-relative clauses (ORCs) are easier, as predicted by working-memory-based theories (e.g., Chen et al, 2008; Gibson & Wu, 2011;Hsiao & Gibson, 2003).…”

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confidence: 99%

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When Structure Competes with Semantics: Reading Chinese Relative Clauses

Zhou

Yao

Christianson

2018

Collabra: Psychology

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An ongoing debate in Chinese psycholinguistics is whether subject-relative clauses or object-relative clauses are more difficult to process. The current study asks what happens when structure and plausibility are pitted against each other in Chinese relative clause processing. Chinese relative clause structures and semantic plausibility were manipulated to create both plausible and implausible versions of subject-and object-relative clauses. This method has been used in other languages (e.g., English) to elicit thematic role reversal comprehension errors. Importantly, these errors-as well as online processing difficulties-are especially frequent in implausible versions of dispreferred (noncanoncial) structures. If one relative clause structure in Chinese is highly dispreferred, the structural factor and plausibility factor should interact additively. If, however, the structures are relatively equally difficult to process, then there should be only a main effect of plausibility. Sentence reading times as well as analyses on lexical interest areas revealed that Chinese readers used plausibility information almost exclusively when reading the sentences. Relative clause structure had no online effect and small but consistent offline effects. Taken together, the results support a slight preference in offline comprehension for Chinese subject-relative clauses, as well as a central role for semantic plausibility, which appears to be the dominant factor in online processing and a strong determinant of offline comprehension. Keywords:Chinese relative clauses; semantic plausibility; syntactic parsing; eye movements; Good Enough Theory Introduction Chinese relative clauses processingChinese has a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) structure, but the word order in Chinese relative clauses is different from most other languages with SVO structure. Unlike English or French, whose relative clause structure is head-initial, Chinese has head-final relative clauses, with the relative clause preceding the head noun (see (1)). Thus, in the Chinese subject-relative clause (SRC), the word order is "V-N(patient)-de-N(agent)" while in object-relative clause (ORC), the word order is "N(agent)-V-de-N(patient)." On one hand, the distance between the relative clause verb and the head noun is longer in SRCs, which may cause longer integration and processing time for SRCs. In addition, the canonical agent-first word order is reversed in SRCs, potentially also increasing processing difficulty. On the other hand, the de in the ORC is temporarily ambiguous. The relativizer de also appears as a postnominal genitive (possessive) marker. This ambiguity in ORCs is not resolved until the main clause verb. Thus, it may take longer for readers to process and reanalyze the de in ORCs to reach the correct interpretation. In both cases, the main clause verb is a critical point of integration and/or disambiguation (cf. Staub, Dillon, & Clifton, 2017).(1) a. 传唤(summon)证人(witness)的(that)法官(judge)喜欢 ( The witness/judge liked Beijing opera (True/False) Zhou, P., et al...

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Can Large Language Model Surprisal Capture the Informativity Bias in Human Language Processing?

He¹,

He²

2023

Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems

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The subject-relative advantage in Chinese: Evidence for expectation-based processing

Cited by 78 publications

References 53 publications

Cross-linguistic psycholinguistics and its critical role in theory development: early beginnings and recent advances

Cross-linguistic psycholinguistics and its critical role in theory development: early beginnings and recent advances

When Structure Competes with Semantics: Reading Chinese Relative Clauses

Can Large Language Model Surprisal Capture the Informativity Bias in Human Language Processing?

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