The child the apple eats: processing of argument structure in Mandarin verb-final sentences.

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Psycholinguistics
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Mandarin Chinese exhibits flexible word order with minimal morphology, challenging traditional linguistic concepts.
• Understanding argument structure processing in Mandarin is crucial for crosslinguistic psycholinguistic models.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how monolingual Mandarin speakers process argument structure in verb-final sentences.
• To determine the role of word order versus other cues in agent assignment.
• To explore the real-time neural mechanisms underlying Mandarin sentence comprehension.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a forced agent-assignment task with monolingual Mandarin speakers.
• Collected electroencephalography (EEG) data to capture real-time neural processing.
• Analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs) to identify specific processing effects.

Main Results:

• Sentence interpretation was not solely dependent on word order when other cues were absent.
• Coverbs BA and BEI strongly signaled agent selection, but comprehension resulted from multiple interacting cues.
• EEG data revealed that BA and BEI influenced processing before verb onset.
• Role reversal anomalies elicited an N400 effect without a subsequent P600 effect.

Conclusions:

• Mandarin sentence comprehension involves an online, interactive process among various cues.
• Findings challenge linear cue-strength models and support language-specific sentence processing mechanisms.
• This research provides insights into the cognitive architecture of language processing across different languages.