Is There a Processing Preference for Object Relative Clauses in Chinese? Evidence From ERPs.

Talat Bulut,Shih-Kuen Cheng,Denise H Wu,Kun-Yu Xu,Daisy L Hung

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00995

Abstract

A consistent finding across head-initial languages, such as English, is that subject relative clauses (SRCs) are easier to comprehend than object relative clauses (ORCs). However, several studies in Mandarin Chinese, a head-final language, revealed the opposite pattern, which might be modulated by working memory (WM) as suggested by recent results from self-paced reading performance. In the present study, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded when participants with high and low WM spans (measured by forward digit span and operation span tests) read Chinese ORCs and SRCs. The results revealed an N400-P600 complex elicited by ORCs on the relativizer, whose magnitude was modulated by the WM span. On the other hand, a P600 effect was elicited by SRCs on the head noun, whose magnitude was not affected by the WM span. These findings paint a complex picture of relative clause processing in Chinese such that opposing factors involving structural ambiguities and integration of filler-gap dependencies influence processing dynamics in Chinese relative clauses.

Highlights

There has been a great deal of interest in relative clauses (RCs) in psycholinguistic research
The comprehension accuracy and reaction times were subjected to two separate repeated-measures ANOVAs with RC types (SRC & object relative clauses (ORCs)) as the within-subjects factor and working memory (WM) as the betweensubjects factor
There was no interaction between RC type and WM [F(1,22) = 1.95], either, the low WM group took numerically longer to answer comprehension questions for subject relative clauses (SRCs) than ORCs (p = 0.087, SE = 0.075)

Summary

Introduction

There has been a great deal of interest in relative clauses (RCs) in psycholinguistic research. This interest stemmed mainly from the complexity and non-canonicity of RCs, which afforded empirical tests of psycholinguistic postulates. As the English subject and object RCs differed minimally in surface form [only the ordering of the noun phrase (NP) and the verb phrase (VP)] but differed substantially in terms of structure (notice the locus of t in 1a and 1b), they have been found to be apt for experimental study. The same finding was reported for different languages including English (King and Kutas, 1995; Traxler et al, 2002), Dutch (Frazier, 1987a), French (Cohen and Mehler, 1996), German (Mecklinger et al, 1995) and Spanish (Betancort et al, 2009)

Results

Discussion

Conclusion