Reversibility in Chinese word formation influences target identification.

2011

We recorded event-related brain potentials during the processing of visually presented compound words in Mandarin Chinese. We capitalized on a particular characteristic of Chinese word formation, where two constituents can be combined in two different orders (A+B or B+A), yielding distinct meanings-so-called "reversible words". By investigating the impact of structural reversibility on the processing of compounds in Chinese during a lexical decision task, the present study revealed a pronounced difference between reversible and non-reversible words. Analyses revealed a more enhanced negativity (N400) for reversible words, reflecting demands during semantic processing, followed by a P300-lik…