Abstract
This is a study of the collocation of Chinese verbs with different lexical aspects and aspect markers. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we explored the processing of aspect violation sentences. In the experiment, we combined verbs of various lexical aspect types with the progressive aspect marker zhe, and the combination of the achievement verbs and the progressive aspect marker zhe constituted the sentence’s aspect violation. The participants needed to judge whether a sentence was correct after it was presented. Finally, we observed and analyzed the components of ERPs. The results suggest that when the collocation of aspect markers and lexical aspect is ungrammatical, the N400-like and P600 are elicited on aspect markers, while the late AN is elicited by the word after the aspect marker. P600 and N400-like show that the collocation of Chinese verbs with various lexical aspects and aspect markers involve not only syntactic processing, but also the semantic processing; and the late AN may have been due to the syntax revision and the conclusion at the end of sentences.
Highlights
Processing Aspectual Agreement inTense and aspect are important means for human language to encode time information [1]
In the lateral analysis of the post-critical words, we found that the aspect violation sentences led to the late anterior negative (late AN)
These results revealed the cognitive processing of the collocation of different lexical aspect verb types and aspect markers
Summary
Tense and aspect are important means for human language to encode time information [1]. Tense refers to the time when an action takes place, such as the present, past or future [2]. Grammatical aspect refers to a state or a series of progressive states observed by the speaker in a time viewpoint or a series of time viewpoints [5,6], that is, whether the event is in progress or has been completed. The perfect aspect views a situation from the outside, and presents an indivisible whole, i.e., a completed or stopped event; while the progressive aspect views a situation from the inside, i.e., the presented situation is an ongoing process, which is usually continuous and implies temporality, dynamism and willingness [7].
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