Classification Of Chinese Ambiguity Words And Its ERP Research

Ambiguity is quite universal in human languages. Lexical ambiguity is a fundamental phenomenon. The study of lexical ambiguity process involves a fundamental problem of language understanding:the process of language comprehension is modular or interactive. At present, academia’s research mainly based on Indo-European languages, however, the study on Chinese ambiguous words access is less. In addition,a clear classification for ambiguous words in the domestic need to be carried on, they are all based on the standard of the west and simply translate western terminology.Thus,it is not conductive to study the process of Chinese ambiguous words more systematically.Therefore, in order to study the process of Chinese ambiguous words more deeply and systematically, in this paper, based on the classification of Chinese ambiguous words, we study the process of Chinese ambiguous words and its hemisphere effect.We use ERP technology, compare the differences between the dominant and the subordinate meaning of ambiguous words, and investigate if different types of ambiguous words’process exist differences and its hemisphere effect.Through the experiment,the conclusions are as follows:Firstly, As for grammatical ambiguity words and semantic ambiguity words, their dominant and subordinate meaning are different in N1、 N400、 and LPC amplitude. The dominant meaning of ambiguous words elicit a larger N400than the subordinate meaning of ambiguous words, which reflects that processing of the subordinate meaning of ambiguous words is more difficult than that of the dominant meaning of ambiguous words. The experimental results support the reordered access model of ambiguity processing, consistent with interactive theory of language understanding. In addition, the categories of ambiguous words can affect the meaning access within the process of ambiguous words. Grammatical ambiguous words and semantic ambiguous words are different in the early stage of processing, however, there are no difference in the later stages of processing.Secondly, As for the two hemispheres effect of different kinds of ambiguous words processing, in the early stage of the ambiguous word processing, the activation of the right hemisphere is more obvious, and by the later phase of integration processing, the activation of the left hemisphere is more obvious. In the course of ambiguous words processing, the two hemispheres are both involved, and the integration processing of ambiguous words depends on the interaction of the left and right hemispheres.