Search results for "Complementary distribution"

Play it by ear? An ERP study of Chinese polysemous verb yǒu

2021

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 …