An ERP Study On “V Zhe” Existential Sentences In Modern Chinese

Although many scholars had been researched the Chinese existent sentences, there are still many unresolved questions, the most glaring one of which is the generative mechanism of the Chinese existential sentences structure“NPL+V zhe+NP”.This article, which is based on the Huang(1997)’s C hinese light verbs syntax theory, sets a ERP experiment to investigate the generation and understanding of Chinese existential sentences. Using the matching judgment task between pictures and sentences, the author intends to observe differences in the mental processes of static and transitive existential sentences with“V+zhe”, static intransitive existential sentences with “V+zhe”, dynamic intransitive existential sentences with “V+zhe” and their each corresponding variations. By doing so, the author hopes to understand the generative mechanism of C hinese existential sentences and provides more circumstantial evidence for theoretical studies.The result of the experiment indicates that existential sentences and transpositional sentences have a significant difference on LPC, different existential sentences have significant differences on N400, different sentences with“V+zhe” have significant differences both on N400 and P600, while different existential sentences have no significant differences on LPC.By analyzing the result of the experiment and referencing related C hinese syntax theory, the author comes out the following conclusions:First, the processing of the three types of existential sentences with“V+zhe” differs on N400 and P600, while different existential sentences have no significant differences on LPC, which indicates these three types have no significant differences in subsequent integrated processing. Therefore, existential sentences with“V+zhe” should be classified by their verbs. According to the nature of verbs, these sentences can be classified as existential sentences with double- valence or transitive verb, existential sentences with un-accusative verbs and existential sentences with un-ergative verbs. These sentences will be further classified by the different sense of “V+zhe” as “static existential sentences” and “dynamic existential sentences”.Second, by contrasting the existential sentences and transpositional sentences, the author observed greater LPC amplitude induced by the processing of existential sentences cost more resources in the brain. The result indicates that some syntax conversion may exist in these two sentence patterns, which supports the syntactic interpretation of light verb.