Chinese Relative Clauses Research Articles

Taiwanese EFL Learners’ English Relative Clauses Learning

Relative clause processing in Chinese is different from English. However, Chinese EFL learners face difficulty when they produce relative clauses. In order to help EFL learners be familiar with their writing skills and ease their anxiety, making a clear concept is necessary. Therefore, contrastive analysis (CA), a rule of a comparison between Chinese and English relative clauses is employed in this study. In the experiment, the treatment group had a positive evaluation of the contrastive analysis approach. Students felt that CA approach could really help them learn English clauses. They were willing to apply the method in the learning procedure. In addition, EFL learners also suggested that EFL teachers need to provide more illustrations and interpretations about the CA approach in the learning process.

Processing relative clauses in Chinese as a second language

This project investigates second language (L2) learners’ processing of four types of Chinese relative clauses crossing extraction types and demonstrative-classifier (DCl) positions. Using a word order judgment task with a whole-sentence reading technique, the study also discusses how psycholinguistic theories bear explanatory power in L2 data. An overall preference for DCl-first structures and an advantage of DCl-subject relative clauses over the other three structures were found. Results were largely compatible with the filler-gap domain theory and indicated a weak subject-gap advantage. These motivations are subject to influences from other factors, and a multi-constraint proposal was proposed.

Evidence of the Accessibility Hierarchy in Relative Clauses in Chinese as a Second Language

Relative clause (RC) structures are productive and complex in Chinese. While second language acquisition studies of RCs in English has a long tradition, it is only in recent years that the Chinese as a second/foreign language researchers started to pay close attention to the comparative difficulties of different types of Chinese RCs for learners. A well-known markedness generalization regarding the RC structure is the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (AH), and its implications in second language acquisition have been well-attested in English and other postnominal RCs. This research tests if Chinese as a foreign language learners' production ease of different RC types adheres to the order of the AH, and if such markedness is reflected in RC-forming strategies in learners' interlanguage. Learners in a written sentence combination task produced more target-like subject and direct object RCs than indirect object and object of preposition RCs. Further evidence for a subject RC preference was found in error analysis. Meanwhile, learners used gap and pronoun strategies within the AH constraint, indicating that their interlanguage grammar is comparable to that of natural languages. We conclude that the implicational generalization of the AH holds true in second language (L2) Chinese.

Effect of thematic order on the comprehension of Chinese relative clauses

This paper investigates the comprehension of relative clauses in Mandarin Chinese, where noun phrases are head-final and both an object-relative advantage and a subject-relative advantage have been previously reported. Two self-paced reading experiments are reported, suggesting that the comprehension of Chinese relative clauses is sensitive to the thematic role orders both in the relative clauses and in the preceding discourse context. Experiment 1 showed that the PATIENT-action-AGENT order of a passive sentence in the context did not facilitate either the action-PATIENT-AGENT order of a subject relative clause or the AGENT-action-PATIENT order of an object relative clause. Experiment 2 showed that only the canonical SVO sentence (not the bǎ sentence) in Mandarin Chinese, which had full thematic order overlap with the object relatives induced sustained faster reading times of an object relative clause. Taken together, these findings suggest that Chinese object relative clauses were read faster than subject relative clauses only when the preceding discourse contexts presented a thematic order consistent with these object relatives. The comprehension of Chinese relative clauses, therefore, is sensitive to the thematic order consistency between the discourse context and the relative clauses.

A corpus-linguistic study of multiple relative clauses in Chinese

Abstract This study investigates the ordering restriction of two relative clauses modifying the same head noun phrase in Chinese. We use both retrospective and corpus data to challenge Larson and Takahashi's (2007) account of the ordering of such multiple relative clauses in Chinese in terms of the distinction of individual-level and stage-level relative clauses. Instead, we offer an account based on the discourse function of the multiple relative clauses in Chinese. Specifically, we argue that relative clauses that serve to provide grounding information for the head noun tend to precede other types of relative clauses. The proposed ordering restriction is shown to account for the ordering of multiple relative clauses in both Chinese and English.

Building Chinese relative clause structures with lexical and syntactic cues: evidence from visual world eye-tracking and reading times

Relative clauses (RCs) in Chinese are prenominal. In object-modifying, object-extracted RCs (e.g. Click on [RC the ball broke] window, meaning ‘Click on the window [RC that the ball broke]), the ambiguous status of the local noun ball and the long-distance attachment of the head noun window into the main verb appear to make online parsing of Chinese RCs particularly difficult. By interposing mismatching classifiers and the passive marker BEI into the RC sentences, we investigated whether the presence of incomplete heads would add storage costs, as predicted by the Dependency Locality Theory (DLT), or would serve as retrieval cues to help pre-build the RC structure, as predicted by the cue-based retrieval theory. Results from a visual world eye-tracking experiment and a self-paced reading showed that Chinese comprehenders are able to use BEI cues and the mismatching classifier (albeit to a less extent) to pre-build RC structure, providing support for the cue-based retrieval theory.

Processing Chinese relative clauses: evidence for the subject-relative advantage.

A general fact about language is that subject relative clauses are easier to process than object relative clauses. Recently, several self-paced reading studies have presented surprising evidence that object relatives in Chinese are easier to process than subject relatives. We carried out three self-paced reading experiments that attempted to replicate these results. Two of our three studies found a subject-relative preference, and the third study found an object-relative advantage. Using a random effects bayesian meta-analysis of fifteen studies (including our own), we show that the overall current evidence for the subject-relative advantage is quite strong (approximate posterior probability of a subject-relative advantage given the data: 78–80%). We argue that retrieval/integration based accounts would have difficulty explaining all three experimental results. These findings are important because they narrow the theoretical space by limiting the role of an important class of explanation—retrieval/integration cost—at least for relative clause processing in Chinese.

Subject/object processing asymmetries in Korean relative clauses: Evidence from ERP data.

Subject relative (SR) clauses have a reliable processing advantage in VO languages like English in which relative clauses (RCs) follow the head noun. The question is whether this is also routinely true of OV languages like Japanese and Korean, in which RCs precede the head noun. We conducted an event-related brain potential (ERP) study of Korean RCs to test whether the SR advantage manifests in brain responses as well, and to tease apart the typological factors that might contribute to them. Our results suggest that brain responses to RCs are remarkably similar in VO and OV languages, but that ordering of the RC and its head noun localizes the response to different sentence positions. Our results also suggest that marking the right edge of the RC in Chinese (Yang et al. 2010) and Korean and the absence of it in Japanese (Ueno & Garnsey 2008) affect the response to the following head noun. The consistent SR advantage found in ERP studies lends further support to a universal subject preference in the processing of relative clauses.

Syntactic priming in Chinese sentence comprehension: Evidence from Event-Related Potentials

Using the event-related potential (ERP) technique, this study examined the nature of syntactic priming effects in Chinese. Participants were required to read prime-target sentence pairs each embedding an ambiguous relative clause (RC) containing either the same verb or a synonymous verb. In Chinese, the word de serves as a relative clause marker. During reading a potential Chinese RC structure (either the prime or the target sentence), Chinese readers initially expect to read an Subject–Verb–Object (SVO) structure but the encounter of a relative clause marker de would make readers abandon the initial strategy and reanalyze the structure as a relative clause. A reduced P600 effect was elicited by the critical word de in the target sentence containing the same initial verb as in the prime sentence. No significant reduction of the P600 was observed in the target sentences in the synonymous condition. The results demonstrated that verb repetition but not similarity in meaning produced a syntactic priming effect in Chinese. The constraint-based lexicalist hypothesis and the argument structure theory were adopted to explain the syntactic priming effect obtained in the current study.

The role of animacy in Chinese relative clause processing

Two experiments investigated Chinese relative clause processing by manipulating the animacy of the head noun phrases in the matrix clause (hereafter called head NPs) and in the embedded clause (hereafter called relative-clause-internal NPs) in a self-paced reading paradigm. Experiment 1 showed that subject-modifying object relative clauses (S-ORCs) were easier to process than subject-modifying subject relative clauses (S-SRCs) under animate–inanimate configuration (animate relative-clause-internal NPs and inanimate head NPs), but S-SRCs were easier to process than S-ORCs under inanimate–animate configuration (inanimate relative-clause-internal NPs and animate head NPs). Experiment 2 showed that object-modifying object relative clauses (O-ORCs) were easier to process than object-modifying subject relative clauses (O-SRCs) under both animacy configurations. These results suggest that animacy configuration of the relative-clause-internal NPs and the head NPs plays an important role in Chinese relative clause processing. These results can be explained by thematic fit accounts.

Processing Chinese relative clauses in context

This paper presents a self-paced reading experiment comparing the processing of subject-extracted relative clauses (SRCs) and object-extracted relative clauses (ORCs) in supportive contexts in Chinese. It is argued that lack of a consistent pattern in the literature for the comparison between Chinese SRCs and ORCs is due to potential temporary ambiguity in these constructions in null contexts. By placing the materials in contexts biased towards a relative clause (RC) interpretation, we limit the effects of temporary ambiguity. The results of the experiment demonstrate that SRCs are read more slowly than ORCs in supportive contexts. These results provide evidence for working memory-based sentence processing theories whereby processing difficulty increases for connecting sentence elements that are further apart. Some convergent evidence that strengthens these conclusions comes from recent research on aphasic populations where a dissociation between English and Chinese RC processing has been revealed: whereas English aphasic patients have more difficulty with ORCs and Chinese aphasic patients have more difficulty with SRCs (Su, Lee, & Chung, 2007). Taken together, these results support the idea that sentence processing is constrained by working memory limitations.

Experience and generalization in a connectionist model of Mandarin Chinese relative clause processing.

Sentences containing relative clauses are well known to be difficult to comprehend, and they have long been an arena in which to investigate the role of working memory in language comprehension. However, recent work has suggested that relative clause processing is better described by ambiguity resolution processes than by limits on extrinsic working memory. We investigated these alternative views with a Simple Recurrent Network (SRN) model of relative clause processing in Mandarin Chinese, which has a unique pattern of word order across main and relative clauses and which has yielded mixed results in human comprehension studies. To assess the model's ability to generalize from similar sentence structures, and to observe effects of ambiguity through the sentence, we trained the model on several different sentence types, based on a detailed corpus analysis of Mandarin relative clauses and simple sentences, coded to include patterns of noun animacy in the various structures. The model was evaluated on 16 different relative clause subtypes. Its performance corresponded well to human reading times, including effects previously attributed to working memory overflow. The model's performance across a wide variety of sentence types suggested that the seemingly inconsistent results in some prior empirical studies stemmed from failures to consider the full range of sentence types in empirical studies. Crucially, sentence difficulty for the model was not simply a reflection of sentence frequency in the training set; the model generalized from similar sentences and showed high error rates at points of ambiguity. The results suggest that SRNs are a powerful tool to examine the complicated constraint-satisfaction process of sentence comprehension, and that understanding comprehension of specific structures must include consideration of experiences with other similar structures in the language.

Animacy effects in Chinese relative clause processing

Prior research on relative clauses (RCs) in Mandarin Chinese has led to conflicting results regarding ease of processing subject-extracted RCs (SRCs) versus object-extracted RCs (ORCs) and has often used animacy configurations that are rare in corpora. Building on animacy patterns observed in a corpus, we used self-paced reading to explore how animacy influences real-time processing of Chinese RCs. Experiment 1 tested SRCs, and found marginal facilitation effects with animate heads (subjects) and inanimate objects. Experiment 2 tested ORCs and found significant facilitation effects with inanimate head (objects). Experiment 3 showed that when the subject is animate and the object inanimate, ORCs are as easy to process as SRCs, but when the subject is inanimate and the object is animate, SRCs are processed faster. Thus, the animacy of the head and the embedded noun must be taken into account when evaluating processing ease.

Multiple-classifier constructions and nominal expressions in Chinese

This paper examines multiple-classifier constructions in Chinese, in which two classifiers are stacked in one nominal position. The following three properties are found in these constructions: (i) strict linear ordering between different types of classifiers, (ii) definiteness/specificity of the lower DP, and (iii) obligatory non-distributive readings. The properties of multiple-classifier constructions allow us to study the syntax and semantics of nominal expressions in Chinese from a novel point of view. We argue that, syntactically, and against the bare NP analysis in Chierchia (in: Rothstein S (ed) Events and grammar, Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp 53–103, 1998a, Nat Lang Semant 6:339–405, 1998b) and the Classifier Phrase analysis in Cheng and Sybesma (Linguist Inq 30:509–542, 1999; in: Cinque G, Kayne R (ed) The Oxford handbook of comparative syntax, Oxford University Press, pp 259–292, 2005), from the properties of multiple-classifier constructions, a universal DP analysis is favored (as in Li, Linguist Inq 29: 693–702, 1998). Incorporating the theories in Zamparelli (in: Alexiadou A, Wilder C (eds) Linguistics today: possessors, predicates and movement in the determiner phrase, vol 22, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp 259–301, 1998) and Dayal (Linguist Philos 27:393–450, 2004), we demonstrate that a generalized Chierchian approach (without his semantic parameter) best captures the syntax–semantics mappings within nominal expressions in Chinese. From a compositional semantic point of view, we argue that multiple-classifier constructions should be treated as an instance of partitive construction with an empty partitive head. The hypothesis of an empty partitive head not only accounts for the properties of the multiple-classifier constructions, but it also offers explanations for the asymmetry of partitive readings in Chinese relative clauses.

On Chinese appositive relative clauses

There is currently no consensus in the literature with the respect to the semantic status of relative clauses in Mandarin Chinese. Some authors (Zhang 2001; Del Gobbo 2003, 2004, 2005) claim that relative clauses in Mandarin Chinese can only be interpreted as restrictives; others (see Lin 2003) instead maintain that relative clauses in this language can be both restrictive and appositive. In this paper, I claim that Chinese relative clauses modifying proper names and pronouns can indeed be appositive, but they are still crucially different from appositive relative clauses in English. Following Cinque’s (2006a, 2008a) distinction between “integrated appositive relative clauses” and “non-integrated” ones, I claim that Chinese appositive relatives belong to the class of the “integrated” ones. I furthermore propose that the typological difference between the “integrated” appositives and the “non-integrated” ones is due to the absence versus presence of the relative pronoun. Adopting Cinque’s (2006a, 2008a) theory of relativization, I propose a structure for Chinese relative clauses whereby c-command of the internal head of the relative is disallowed. This explains why the internal head of the Chinese relative clause can never be generated as a relative pronoun and, more generally, why overt relative pronouns are unavailable in prenominal relative clauses cross-linguistically. Last, the theory here outlined makes the strong empirical prediction that no prenominal relative clause can be appositive in the canonical sense.

Sentence integration processes: An ERP study of Chinese sentence comprehension with relative clauses

In an event-related potentials (ERPs) study, we examined the comprehension of different types of Chinese (Mandarin) relative clauses (object vs. subject-extracted) to test the universality and language specificity of sentence comprehension processes. Because Chinese lacks morphosyntactic cues to sentence constituent relations, it allows a test of the possibility that semantic-contextual processes dominate the extraction of clausal relations, in contrast to the structure-dependent processing in English and many other languages. ERP results at the RC embedded verbs showed a P600 effect for the subject-extraction type, reflecting a processing of phrasal reconfiguration, and an N400 effect for the object-extraction type, reflecting a processing of meaning reinterpretation. A central–frontal sustained negativity was produced by the RC head noun of object-extraction, suggesting a combined effect of meaning derivation and referents establishment. LORETA (Low Resolution Electrical Tomography) source localization showed activation of posterior dominance (e.g., BA 22/39/19/41/42) supporting the integration of structure mapping (P600) and meaning derivation (N400) in a developing sentential representation, consistent with the memory unification and control model (Hagoort, 2005). More left-lateralized anterior regions of a frontal–temporal network (e.g., BA 47/38) became active later in the sentence (a sustained central–frontal negativity), when the thematic-role specification for multiple referents may have required additional cognitive and memory resources. Our findings suggest that Chinese sentence reading recruits a neural network that is sensitive to the sequential/hierarchical organization of linguistic inputs in a manner that resembles to the structure-dependent cognitive processes in other languages, reflecting a universal property of language processing. The ERP data shows that early lexical processes are important in the integration process, but also challenges the view that Chinese text reading depends primarily on semantic-contextual processing in the derivation of meaning representation.

A discourse-pragmatic study of the word order variation in Chinese relative clauses

In Mandarin Chinese, a relative clause (RC) can either immediately precede the head NP, or may be separated from its head by a numeral-classifier sequence (NCL). This word order variation results in two types of indefinite nominal constructions: the OMN with the RC+NCL+NP order (e.g., [tā xiě Øde]RC [yī–běn]NCLshū, ‘a book (that) he wrote’) and the IMN with NCL+RC+NP order (e.g., [yī–běn]NCL [tā xiě Øde]RCshū, ‘a book (that) he wrote’). In this paper, we use a corpus-linguistic perspective to explore the conditioning factors that influence the variation of these two constructions in discourse. In particular, grammatical roles of relativized NPs; information status, animacy, and discourse salience of head NPs; grounding mechanisms; and discourse functions of relative clauses are analyzed. Examinations of the distribution and occurrence of these two constructions show that they are deployed in discourse to serve different discourse purposes. The OMN is mainly used in connection with abstract entities with low discourse salience, and serves the discourse function of identifying the new head NP. In contrast, the IMN is mainly used in conjunction with concrete (human and concrete object) entities with high discourse salience to serve the discourse function of characterization. It will be argued that the variation of these two constructions can be explained with regard to the cognitive and communicative principles of relevance (Sperber and Wilson, 1995) together with interactions between the discourse function of the NCL and the discourse functions of the RC.

The Distribution of Relative Clauses in Chinese Discourse

Abstract The particular forms of relative clauses (RCs) in Mandarin Chinese lead to particular cognitive, semantic, pragmatic, and discourse constraints on speakers and writers. In this study, analyses of oral and written Mandarin Chinese narratives demonstrate that SS structures (subject head noun phrase [NP] modified by a subject RC) are produced more frequently than OS (object head NP modified by subject RC) and OO structures (object head NP modified by object RC), which are more frequent than the rare SO (subject head NP modified by an object RC) structure. These patterns can be explained by the interaction of cognitive strategies of closure and the semantic and discourse functions of RC constructions. In particular, the center-embeddedness of Mandarin Chinese RCs likely leads to greater cognitive load for speakers than writers, and the fact that head NPs are more likely to refer to humans helps predict the predominance of the SS pattern.

The Distribution of Relative Clauses in Chinese Discourse

The particular forms of relative clauses (RCs) in Mandarin Chinese lead to particular cognitive, semantic, pragmatic, and discourse constraints on speakers and writers. In this study, analyses of oral and written Mandarin Chinese narratives demonstrate that SS structures (subject head noun phrase [NP] modified by a subject RC) are produced more frequently than OS (object head NP modified by subject RC) and OO structures (object head NP modified by object RC), which are more frequent than the rare SO (subject head NP modified by an object RC) structure. These patterns can be explained by the interaction of cognitive strategies of closure and the semantic and discourse functions of RC constructions. In particular, the center-embeddedness of Mandarin Chinese RCs likely leads to greater cognitive load for speakers than writers, and the fact that head NPs are more likely to refer to humans helps predict the predominance of the SS pattern.

Noun Phrases in Chinese and English: A Study of English Structural Problems Encountered by Chinese ESL Students in Hong Kong

This paper gives a contrastive analysis of noun phrases in English and Chinese. The syntactic features of the structures, the devices used to mark distinctions in number, case and gender, as well as the similarities and differences between English and Chinese relative clauses are discussed. Partly due to the documented differences between these structures in the two languages, and partly due to students' incorrect mastery of the target language, Chinese ESL learners in Hong Kong encounter a lot of problems with English noun phrases, including topic-comment structures, choice of relative pronouns in relative clauses, resumptive pronouns, and missing subjects. The paper attempts to find the sources of the problems and proposes a system of teaching priorities for the benefit of teachers and students.