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Updated: Oct 11, 2025

Examining Online Syntactic Processing of Spoken Complex Sentences in Chinese Using Dual-Modal Interference Tasks
Published on: September 5, 2019
Decoding the silence: Neural bases of zero pronoun resolution in Chinese
Shulin Zhang1, Jixing Li2, Yiming Yang3
1University of Georgia, United States.
Abstract:
Chinese is one of many languages that can drop subjects. We report an fMRI study of language comprehension processes in these "zero pronoun" cases. The fMRI data come from Chinese speakers who listened to an audiobook. We conducted both univariate GLM and multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) on these data. We found increased left Temporal Lobe activity for zero pronouns compared to overt subjects, suggesting additional effort searching for an antecedent during zero pronoun resolution. MVPA further revealed that the intended referent of a zero pronoun can be decoded in the Parahippocampal Gyrus and the Precuneus shortly after its presentation. This highlights the role of memory and discourse-level processing in resolving referential expressions, including unspoken ones, in naturalistic language comprehension.
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