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The Effect Of Thematic Information,content Meaning Frequency On Resolving The Ambiguity In Chinese Language

Posted on:2003-11-18Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y W WuFull Text:PDF
GTID:2155360062480665Subject:Basic Psychology
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
The purpose of comprehending language is to construct a coherent mental representation or structure. Ambiguity is an omnipresent phenomenon in language system. In order to comprehend the ambiguous sentence accurately, an appropriate meaning should be selected from activated meaning and strengthened while the other inappropriate meanings are inhibited. Three experiments were conducted to explore the different thematic information for resolving the syntactic ambiguity and the effects of context meaning frequency. Sentence verification task is used in three experiments to study the effect of reasonable and equilibratory type thematic information, reasonable and unreasonable type thematic information, reasonable and self-contradict type thematic information for resolving ambiguity in Chinese sentences.The main results and conclusions are as follows:1. Different thematic information have different roles on resolving ambiguoussentences. The thematic role information of reasonable can successfully construct a foundational mental representation, But other type thematic information can't successfully construct this representation. The reasonable thematic information is superior to other type thematic information in inhibiting the inappropriate meanings of ambiguous sentences, on the condition of equilibratory type and unreasonable type thematic information, the resolution of syntactic ambiguity must depends on the context. But the subjects must experience the process of "wait and look at in the thematic information梒onstruct the dominant meaning梒ontext verification", on the condition of se If-contradict type thematic, the resolution of temporary syntactic ambiguity also depends on the context. But the subjects must experience the process of "construct the foundational mental representation梔amage this representation梤econstruct the new foundational mental representation".2. The processes of syntactic ambiguity resolving are affected by the context. Based on the result, on the condition of reasonable type thematic information, the context have no significant effects, the main role of it is verified the foundationalinrepresentation. But on the condition of other type thematic information, the context have significant effects , the main role of them is verified the foundational representation and the meanings frequency and then resolving the ambiguous sentence.3. The meaning frequency had effect on the sentence ambiguity resolution, whereas the effect depends on the content. When the subjects judge the multi-meanings of ambiguity sentences, the dominant meaning is first activated and then the subordinate meanings. It is more diffcult to inhibit dominant meaning of ambiguous sentences than subordinate meanings.4. When the syntactic structure of the sentence is normal, syntactic processingshould be facilitated. When the syntactic structure is abnormal, on the analysis and comprehension of a sentence defers to appearance of the semantic and the content information.
Keywords/Search Tags:thematic information, content meaning frequency, syntactic ambiguity, ambiguity resolution
PDF Full Text Request
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