The Validity And Utility Of The Component Unit In Chinese Sentence Chunking

The current thesis adopts dependency grammar(DG)to investigate the mechanism of chunking in human language processing.It pursues two aims:firstly,it examines the relation between the chunks identified in sentence dividing experiments and the newly-established component unit of DG;and secondly,it explores the utility of the component unit and the chunking data in resolving controversial hierarchical issues in Mandarin Chinese.Previous studies on chunking have been focused on the influence of the mechanism in general cognitive processes such as learning,memory and expertise development.However,little attention was paid to the role that chunking plays in language comprehension and production.In regard to the component unit,it has been used together with chunking data to address theoretical debates in English grammar,but more effort is needed to explore its validity in the Chinese language.To fill this gap,the researcher carried out three rounds of chunking experiments in which native speakers of Chinese were prompted to divide four types of sentences into a certain number of chunks.After the experiment,the number of the chunks,components and constituents were calculated for further analysis.The results suggest that the component unit has clear predictive value in predicting how informants will chunk sentences.The informants chunked the sentences in such a manner that the resulting chunks were components(the ratio of components to chunks being 94%).Acknowledging the predictive value of the component unit,the study also proves that the component can be used to address controversial hierarchical issues in Chinese grammar.In the paper,four typical Mandarin Chinese constructions are analyzed and assigned dependency structures based on the reasoning proposed.The findings are as follows:first,the "double functional constituent" in a pivotal sentence is the dependent of the predicate to its left(which is also the sentence root);second,serial verb constructions,or co-verbs,take the first verb in the sentence to be the root;third,bd is the root of sentences in a ba construction,and it takes the following NP as its dependent;and fourth,for V-de constructions with two intervening nouns between the predicates,the first noun is dependent on the predicate to its left(which is the root of the sentence),and the second noun on the predicate to its right.