Focus Marker Words Promote Chinese Reading

In the domain of language comprehension,both spoken and written languages contain multiple clues that readers or listeners may use to identify the key points of a sentence,or to mark the most important or prominent linguistic material(i.e.,focus information),in contrast to the background information(i.e.,non-focus information).Researchers have used different methods to investigate the processing differences between focus information and non-focus information.In communication,linguistic focus may be signaled via prosody,focus-sensitive particles or focus markers,prior discourse context,or syntactic structures.The present study attempts to explore the role of focus markers "you" and "cai" and the associated numeral processing in Chinese reading.Thirty-two college students were recruited as participants using Eyelink1000 eyetracker.The experiment design was a 2(focus: non-focus,focus)×2(Numerals: small,large)within participant design.The Chinese focus marker words "you" and "cai" were selected to manipulate the focus information,aiming to compare the processing difference between focus information and nonfocus information,and the processing process of numeral.The results showed as follows:(1)The main effect of focus was significant.Compared with the non-focus information,sentences with focus information took longer to process for readers,indicating that readers' deeper processing of the focus information.(2)Readers were immediately sensitive to syntactic manipulations of focus.The extra processing that occurred in focus information appeared not only in early word coding processing but also in later semantic integration processing.(3)Different numeral sizes did not affect the early processing time of numeral reading,but affected the late processing time of numeral reading.(4)There is no interaction between focus and number size,indicating that the focus under the action of "you" and "cai" is not affected by number size,and readers can keenly detect fuocus and then adjust their reading speed or reading mode.