The Processing Of Verb-Noun Construction In Mandarin Chinese

Verb-Noun construction is an ambiguous construction frequently employed in Mandarin Chinese,for it can be universally construed either as a verb-object structure or modifier-head structure.This situation becomes strikingly conspicuous as the verb and noun involved are disyllabic.The theoretical researches on the verb-object and modifier-head structure are fruitful,but the empirical researches,particularly the processing researches relating to the comparison of the two constructions,are relatively scarce.Against this background,this paper intends to explore the processing of verb-noun collocation in Mandarin Chinese on the basis of previous studies,and analyze the factors affecting the processing of verb-object structures and modifier-head structures from the perspective of lexical prototype,so as to provide neuropsychological evidence for human brain to discriminate polysemous constructions.The whole study was composed of two ERP(Event-Related Potential)experiments on the processing of verb-noun constructions,in which both the verbs and the nouns were disyllabic.Experiment 1 was subdivided into two tasks on the basis of two factors(verb type vs.noun type)within-subjects designs.Task1 tested the effect of the verb type change(typical verb vs.atypical verb)on the processing of verb-noun construction under the condition of the noun being typical,like“打扫教室”(clean the classroom)vs.“自习教室”(the classroom for study),and Task2 tested the similar effect under the condition of the noun being atypical,like“寻找原因”(find the reason)vs.“失败原因”(the reason for failure).Here,the[+/-TYPICALITY]feature of verbs and nouns were determined by referring to previous theoretical studies.The three-way ANOVA analysis in Task 1 revealed a significant main effect of P200(120-250ms)and N400(250-480ms)on the verb type,specifically,the atypical verb significantly elicited more positive P200 than typical verb,while the typical verb significantly elicited more negative N400 than atypical one.In addition,there was a significant N1(80-120ms)effect among the different brain regions but not in verb type.Similar analysis of the data in Task 2 showed that the main effect and interaction effect of N1 component were significant among brain regions,but no such difference was present in P200.In the time window of N400,there came up a significant interaction effect between verb and brain regions.As a whole,Experiment 1 indicated that the processing of verb-noun construction was affected by the verb type:a typical verb was processed faster than an atypical verb as the noun involved was atypical,but no such difference occurred as the noun was typical.From a functional perspective,the“atypical verb+typical noun”construction(which is syntactically realized as a modifier-head structure)was more difficult to process than the“typical verb+typical noun”construction(which is syntactically realized as a verb-object structure).By the way,the results suggested that the“VP+NP”constructions were more difficult to process in harmonious configuration condition than in inharmonious configuration condition.Experiment 2 adopted the same ERP paradigm to investigate how noun type and semantic type affected the processing of verb-noun constructions(in which the verbs involved were all typical and kept constant across the four conditions).It was designed as a 2(typical noun vs.atypical noun)× 2(congruent collocation vs incongruent collocation)within-subjects experiment.The results showed significant interaction effect and main effect of N1 existed among brain regions.The results showed that there was no main effect of noun type and semantic type but there came up significant interaction effects between nouns and hemispheres,and between semantics and hemispheres,as revealed by the P200(120-250ms).The main effect of noun type was significant as revealed by the N400(250-480ms),suggesting that atypical nouns were more activated than typical nouns in the processing.As a result,the modifier-head structures(typical verb + atypical noun)were more difficult to process than verb-object structures(typical verb +typical noun).With regard to the semantic type of constructions,semantic incongruent structures(i.e.,the “Verb + Noun” collocation is ill-formed semantically)was significantly harder than the corresponding semantic congruent structures in the whole course.Overall,Experiment 2 showed that the processing of verb-noun construction varied with noun type and was modulated by the semantic congruency between the verbs and nouns involved.Consequently,the modifier-head structures were more difficult to process than the verb-object structures as the verbs were typical.This thesis provides new evidence for the processing mechanism of verb-noun construction in Mandarin Chinese and demonstrates that the dichotomy of verbs(typical verb vs.atypical verb)and the dichotomy of nouns(typical noun vs.atypical noun)are neuropsychologically favored and hence play an important role in the processing of verb-object structures and modifier-head structures.Our experimental data reveal that atypical words are more difficult to process than typical words in the same syntactic condition(e.g.,the verb-noun construction),proving that it is reasonable to theoretically distinguish nouns and verbs in terms of the categorical typicality.To conclude,this thesis serves as an important attempt to examine how Chinese polysemous structures(e.g.,a verb-object structure and a modifier-head structure is likely to be associated with one shared verb-noun construction)are distinguished neurologically and what factors contribute to the disambiguating of structures in on line processing,bringing to the audience the enlightenment that complex structures are not only discriminated cognitively(on the basis of one’s linguistic intuition)but also neuropsychologically(in light of visualizable EEG indexes).