An ERP Study On The Phrase Structure Violation In Chinese Simple Sentences

The brain mechanism underlying syntactic processing during language comprehension is a hot issue in cognitive science. It is generally accepted that a certain syntactic structure has to be constructed during language comprehension. How does our brain respond to syntactic processing and what are the corresponding activated brain regions? To figure out the role of syntactic processing in language comprehension, and establish a complete syntactic processing theory, the brain mechanism of syntactic processing needs to be researched.In 1980,Kutas & Hillyard used Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to research on the semantically anomalous sentences, and found a negative wave N400 which was referred to reflect semantic integration during language comprehension. Since then, ERPs were widely used in language researches and ERP components related to language comprehension were reported, namely N400, ELAN, LAN and P600.The main purpose of the present study was to investigate the time course and activated brain region of human brain processing syntactic incongruity in Chinese simple sentences. We presented Chinese phrase structure violated sentences visually on a screen, and prepositions served as the crucial word in the present study, ensuring ERP components in the study are elicited by comparatively pure syntactic violations.Results showed that the brain waves of the correct sentences and phrase structure violated sentences differed from 100ms on. The P1 elicited by the syntactically violated sentences had delayed peak latency than that of the P1 elicited by the correct sentences, indicating syntactic and/or semantic processing might start as early as 100ms to some extent. The N200-like component related to response inhibition was found over the central, temporal and occipital regions, and a globally P300 reflecting information integration was also observed in the present study.In addition, the brain waves in the phrase violated condition and correct condition mainly differed in three ERP components in the present study: ELAN-like component, LAN-like component and P600-like component, revealing that the brain mechanism underlying Chinese syntactic processing was alike to that of Indo-European syntactic processing and supported the three-stage model. However, the ELAN-like, LAN-like and P600-like components in the present study were different in amplitude over the right anterior region, indicating that the right frontal area was fully activated and involved in Chinese syntactic processing, which was different from Indo-European languages. Moreover, the peak latency of the three ERP components in the present study were earlier than those in Indo-European languages, we postulated that the Chinese syntactic processing might be earlier.The results from the present study enhance our understanding of syntactic processing in Chinese and show evidence for the applicability of those ERP findings prevailing in the field of Indo-European languages to the Chinese language. However, the reason for the possible difference in Chinese and Indo-European syntactic processing needs to be researched and different syntactic violations and even semantic violations should be researched to gain a better understanding of the Chinese language comprehension.