How semantics works in Chinese relative clause processing: insights from eye tracking.

Recent years have witnessed much research on semantic analysis and syntactic anatomy in ordinary language processing. However, it is still a matter of considerable debate about when and how the semantic integration of single word meanings works and interacts with syntax during on-line comprehension. This study, in an eye-tracking paradigm, took 38 native speakers of Mandarin Chinese as the participants and took Chinese relative clauses as stimuli to figure out the functions of semantics by investigating the conditioning semantic factors influencing and governing the word order variation of Chinese relative clauses during different processing stages. Accordingly, this study manipulated two syntactic variables, i.e., relative clause type and the position of the numeral-classifier sequence (NCL) in the relative clause, as well as a semantic variable, i.e., the abstractness of the head noun that the relative clause modified. Specifically, the study addressed two questions: (1) when semantics is activated and interacts with syntax and (2) how semantics affects syntax during the time course of Chinese relative clause processing. The results indicated that: (1) Semantics was activated and interacted with syntax during the early and late processing stages of Chinese relative clauses, which challenged the sequential order of syntactic and semantic processes, and supported the claims of the Concurrent Processing Model. (2) The syntactic order of the Chinese relative clause was affected by the semantic information of the head noun that the clause modified. Object-extraction relative clauses (ORCs) had a conjunction preference for the order "an object relative clause preceding the numeral-classifier sequence and the head noun." Instead, the subject-extraction relative clause (SRC) which modified a concrete noun (CN) had a co-occurrence preference for the order "numeral-classifier sequence preceding the subject relative clause and the head noun," while the subject-extraction relative clause which modified an abstract noun (AN) had a co-occurrence preference for the order "subject relative clause preceding the numeral-classifier sequence and the head noun." The findings of this study were evaluated in light of the perspectives of truth value semantics of the syntactic components, the semantic compatibility of numeral-classifier sequence and its modified noun as well as the discourse functions of outer modifier nominals and inner modifier nominals.

Will Using a Foreign Language Attenuate the Neophobia?

In two experiments, we tested whether using a foreign language attenuates neophobia at the lexical (Experiment 1) and discoursal (Experiment 2) levels in comparison to using a native language. A total of 687 native Chinese speakers participated in Experiment 1, and 693 in Experiment 2. All of them learned English as a foreign language. They performed paper-and-pencil tasks for measuring their neophobia toward innovative products described in either Chinese or English at the lexical and discoursal levels. Our results suggest that using a foreign language at the discoursal levels can obviously attenuate the neophobia toward innovative products. Moreover, Dual-process Model could explain the mechanisms of neophobic attenuation induced by foreign language use.

Effects of mobile-assisted reading materials on children's L1 lexical development.

Despite the wide and extensive use of mobile-assisted devices, the effectiveness of children's L1 learning with these mobile-assisted technologies has been less discussed. This study aims to explore the effects of mobile-assisted reading materials on Chinese children's L1 vocabulary learning. We adopted a longitudinal and quasi-experimental design consisting of an experiment group using the mobile-assisted materials and a control group using the traditional paper materials, and took children's lexical development as indexed by assessing the parameter, lexical diversity, in different testing times. The results showed that (1) children's L1 vocabulary learning effectiveness of using mobile-assisted materials is as similar as that of using conventional paper materials in general, and (2) the changing patterns of children's L1 lexical development using mobile-assisted materials in different testing times are various. Specifically speaking, (a) in the posttest 1 (the first month), compared with the traditional paper reading materials, the mobile-assisted reading materials have a facilitating effect on the primary school students' L1 vocabulary learning; (b) in the posttest 2 (the second month), children's vocabulary learning effectiveness is inhibited by the mobile-assisted reading materials; (c) in the delayed posttest (the fourth month), there is no difference in the learning effectiveness by these two different kinds of learning materials and the lexical diversity increases slowly but steadily. We analyzed the results from research-design factors and learner-related factors, hoping to shed light on children's mobile-assisted language learning research.

The effects of emotionality and lexical category on L2 word processing in different tasks: Evidence from late Chinese-English bilinguals.

Although it has been well established that emotional content influences language comprehension, the effects of emotionality on L2 (second language: English) word processing require further clarification. Notably, most previous studies unsystematically mixed words of different lexical categories, although they often showed processing differences. Here, using the same set of tightly matched negative, positive, and neutral words across three lexical categories (i.e., nouns, verbs, adjectives), we examined the effects of emotionality and lexical category on L2 word processing by conducting three experiments. In these experiments, three groups of late Chinese-English bilinguals performed three tasks: the emotional Stroop task (Experiment 1), the lexical decision task (Experiment 2), and the emotional categorisation task (Experiment 3), respectively. Overall, our data suggested that emotionality and lexical category exerted no influence on L2 word processing in the emotional Stroop task, but acted interactively to influence it in the other two tasks. The results evidenced that the processing of L2 emotional words was sensitive to task type. Therefore, we conclude that future research on L2 word processing should fully consider the emotionality, lexical category, and task type.

Will Emotional Effects Modulate L2 Lexical Attrition as they Do in L2 Acquisition?

This study attempted to examine the modulation of emotional effects on L2 lexical attrition. For this purpose, a cross-sectional approach was adopted to analyze emotional effects on L2 lexical attrition with a 500-word vocabulary test taken by 188 Chinese-English bilinguals. As indicated by the results, the modulation of emotional effects on L2 lexical attrition was found to be as active as it was in L2 acquisition; Positive words did not differ from negative words in L2 attrition; All three types of emotional words shared a similar attrition pattern, that is, their attrition went very rapidly within the first 4 years, kept stable between year 5 and year 8, and resumed rapidity after the 9th year, with no significant differences in attrition rate between positive and negative words being detected at any stage. Taken together, this is one of the few studies to investigate L2 lexical attrition among Chinese-English bilinguals, and the first to examine emotional effects on L2 lexical attrition. This study supports the Revised Hierarchical Model in predicating the modulation of emotional effects on L2 lexical attrition.

Could L2 Lexical Attrition Be Predicted in the Dimension of Valence, Arousal, and Dominance?

The current study attended to predict L2 lexical attrition by means of a Decision Tree model (DT model) in three emotional dimensions, that is, the valence dimension, the arousal dimension, and the dominance dimension. A sample of 188 participants whose L1 was Chinese and L2 was English performed a recognition test of 500 words for measuring the L2 lexical attrition. The findings explored by the Decision Tree model indicated that L2 lexical attrition could be predicted in all the three emotional dimensions in two aspects: (1) among the three emotional dimensions, the valence dimension was the most powerful in predicting L2 lexical attrition, followed successively by the dominance dimension and the arousal dimension; (2) most of the neutral words in the three emotional dimensions were predicted to be inferior to emotional words in L2 attrition. In addition, the modified Revised Hierarchical Model for emotion could be adopted to justify the modulation of the emotion-memory effects upon L2 lexical attrition.

Literature reading modulates pronoun resolution in counterfactual world: Evidence from event-related potentials.

Counterfactuals are contrary-to-fact statements that are widely used in daily life to convey thoughts about what might have been. Different from fact-based processing, successful counterfactual comprehension requires readers to keep in mind both suppositional information and presupposed fact. Using event-related potentials, the present study investigates how the process of establishing a coreferential relation (i.e., pronoun resolution) is influenced by counterfactual context, and whether it will be modulated by individual difference in literature reading. We compared the P600 (a positive-going deflection, which often reaches its peak around 600 milliseconds after presentation of the stimulus) effects elicited by gender-mismatched pronouns in three conditionals (causal vs. hypothetical vs. counterfactual) between two groups (literature exposure high- vs. low-level group). Results show that for low-level group, incongruent pronouns elicited robust P600 effects across all three conditionals, while for high-level group, the P600 effects were pronounced only in causal and hypothetical conditionals, but not in counterfactual conditionals. These findings suggest (a) different from causal and hypothetical conditionals, the dual meaning and pragmatic implications of counterfactuals may prompt people to go beyond here and now to elaborate their mental models and entertain alternative interpretations, and (b) substantial literature exposure would further enhance pragmatic inference of counterfactual context, leading high-level readers more inclined to elaborate discourse with possible alternative inferences, while leaving low-level readers habitually resort to more straightforward coreferential interpretation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Examining the Functional Category in Chinese-English Code-Switching: Evidence from the Eye-Movements.

To investigate the grammatical constraints of code-switching (CS hereafter) under the disputes of the constraint-based account versus the constraint-free account, the effects of functional category on CS have long been investigated in the existing studies. Thus, the present study, by asking 47 participants to take part in an eye-movement experiment, examined the potential effects of functional category on Chinese-English CS. We found that differential switch costs at varying code-switched conditions as well as robust switch effects that last from the early to the late stage. The findings could tentatively give rise to the theoretical predictions of the minimalist program, a representative of the constraint-free account rather than the functional head constraint, a typical representative of the constraint-based account. Moreover, such switch effects might initiate from the early to the very late stage in terms of time-course of CS processing.

The Impact of World Knowledge on the Processing of Mandarin Possessive Reflexive zijide.

It has long been considered that the Mandarin possessive reflexive zijide can be either locally bound or long distance bound, leading to ambiguity where it fails to exclusively refer back to either long distance binding NP or the local NP. In addition to syntactic factors such as the local versus long distance division, the present study examined the potential influence of general world knowledge on the interpretation of zijide. Three experiments, two offline sentence evaluation tasks and one online sentence reading task, found that zijide could be either facilitated or impeded by world knowledge carried in the NPs of the sentence. The results showed that in some cases, zijide was considered exclusively referring back to the long distance NP. These findings seemed to support the notion of subject orientation effect and demonstrated the influence of world knowledge on the processing of Mandarin possessive reflexive zijide.