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

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Computational Linguistics
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• The interaction between semantic integration and syntactic processing during real-time language comprehension remains debated.
• Understanding the timing and mechanisms of semantic-syntactic interaction is crucial for language processing models.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate when semantics is activated and interacts with syntax during Chinese relative clause processing.
• To examine how semantic factors, specifically head noun abstractness, influence syntactic word order variation in Chinese relative clauses.

Main Methods:

• Employed an eye-tracking paradigm with 38 native Mandarin Chinese speakers.
• Utilized Chinese relative clauses as stimuli, manipulating syntactic variables (clause type, numeral-classifier sequence position) and a semantic variable (head noun abstractness).

Main Results:

• Semantics was found to interact with syntax in both early and late processing stages of Chinese relative clauses, supporting the Concurrent Processing Model.
• The abstractness of the head noun significantly affected syntactic order: object-extraction relative clauses (ORCs) showed a preference for a specific order, while subject-extraction relative clauses (SRCs) varied based on whether the head noun was concrete or abstract.

Conclusions:

• Semantic activation and syntactic interaction occur concurrently, not sequentially, during language processing.
• Semantic information, particularly noun abstractness, plays a critical role in shaping syntactic structure and word order preferences in Chinese relative clauses.