0000000000515108
AUTHOR
Linlin Sun
The grammatical-lexical distinction in Chinese aspectual markers
AbstractThis paper discusses the grammatical-lexical distinction based onBoye and Harder (2012)in the class of aspectual markers in Chinese and aims to decide whether these markers are grammatical or lexical in a theoretically anchored sense. To accomplish this, the language-general criteria proposed inBoye and Harder (2012)are translated into Chinese-specific criteria for diagnosing grammatical vs. lexical status, and these translated criteria are then applied to Chinese aspect markers in a questionnaire-based survey in order to test whether these markers are lexical or grammatical. Our classification of the Chinese markers tested is then compared with a traditional classification based on…
Play it by ear? An ERP study of Chinese polysemous verb yǒu
Abstract Mandarin Chinese yŏu is a polysemous verb. It can be interpreted as meaning either ‘have’ or ‘there be/exist’ in sentences of the form ‘NP1 yŏu NP2’, which can correspondingly be analyzed as either a Have-Possessive construction (‘NP1 has NP2’) or an existential/locative construction (‘(At/in) NP1 there is NP2’), or both. This study used event-related brain potentials to investigate whether and how the interpretation of yŏu in a given ‘NP1 yŏu NP2’ construction is determined by the semantics of the nouns involved and their relationship. Twenty-seven participants read sentences of this construction. The results showed that there were different patterns of brain activity that can be …
Perspective in the Processing of the Chinese Reflexive ziji: ERP Evidence
We investigated the comprehension of the Chinese reflexive ziji, which is typically subject to long-distance binding. However, this preference can be overridden by verb semantics (some verbs require local binding) as well as by subtle feature combinations of intervening noun phrases (NPs) (e.g., 1st/2nd person pronouns block dependencies with more distant 3rd person antecedents). The processing of ziji was examined in sentences containing two verb types (local/self-oriented, distant/other-oriented) and three different intervening NPs (1st, 2nd , 3rd person). The event-related potential data revealed an early interaction of verb and intervener: other-oriented verbs showed more processing eff…