An ERP Study On Syntactic Processing And Semantic Processing In Late Proficient Chinese-English Bilinguals' Comprehension Of English Sentences

Sentence comprehension is the core of language comprehension. It is generally accepted that sentence processing mainly involves two processes: syntactic processing and semantic processing. However, researchers still have not reached a consensus on the issue of when and how syntactic processing and semantic processing integrate. Controversies remain on whether syntactic processing is prior to semantic processing, and whether there is any interaction between syntactic processing and semantic processing in the process of sentence comprehension. Concerning these issues, researchers have postulated two main theoretical hypotheses: modular model and interactive model. Modular model, also called syntax-first model, maintains that syntactic processing and semantic processing are independent to each other at the initial stage of sentence processing, syntactic processing is prior to semantic processing and not influenced by semantic processing while semantic processing is influenced by syntactic processing, and semantic information only confirms or alters the result of syntactic processing. However, interactive model, the opposite view, maintains that syntactic processing is not prior to semantic processing but occurs simultaneously with semantic processing and the two influence each other.Traditional behavioral experiments speculate subjects'sentence processing via measurement on subjects'reaction time. Nevertheless, reaction time is only one dimensional and needs conscious judgment of the subject. Therefore, errors easily occur in the experiment. On account of this flaw, since 1980s a lot of researchers started to study subjects'comprehension of sentences which are locally anomalous (include syntactic anomalous condition, semantic anomalous condition and syntactic-semantic anomalous condition) by means of event-related-potential (ERP). ERP is an ideal experimental method which can continuously measure the cognitive processes of subjects, and it has different sensitive indexes to different cognitive processes and can exclude the interference of conscious judgment in the experiment. Previous ERP studies have reached a consensus: the two different processes do exist, syntactic anomalous conditions can elicit ELAN/LAN and P600 components in different conditions, semantic anomalous conditions can elicit an N400 component, and syntactic-semantic anomalous conditions can elicit P600 and N400 components.At present, studies on sentence processing are mainly concerned about Indo-European languages such as English, Dutch, German, et al. In these studies, almost all subjects are native speakers of Indo-European languages; those using Chinese EFL subjects are limited. This study, via ERP technique, probes the psycholinguistic mechanism of late proficient Chinese-English bilinguals on sentence processing. The results reveal indications as follows.Syntactic and semantic anomalies of English sentences elicit the similar ERP components and time courses in sentence processing of late proficient Chinese-English bilinguals. The result is similar to those studies in which English and other Indo-European languages are the subjects'native languages.Semantic anomalies elicit an N400 effect, syntactic anomalies elicit LAN and P600 effects, and syntactic-semantic anomalies elicit LAN, P600 and N400 effects. Compared with the effects of single anomalies, amplitudes of the effects in double anomalies are distinctively smaller, which demonstrates that syntactic processing and semantic processing interact with each other at the initial and later stages of subjects'comprehension of sentences.The conclusion of this study is that syntactic processing and semantic processing interact with each other in the late proficient Chinese-English bilinguals'comprehension of English sentences.