生命性信息在语言加工中的作用

The Role of Noun Animacy in Language Processing

生命性的范畴化从多个方面影响了语言的加工。名词的生命性信息不仅影响了句法形态标记和句法位置等句法线索的使用,而且在题元角色的分配中发挥一定的作用。较早的研究主要采用反应时和眼动技术,发现生命性信息促进了歧义句和句法复杂句的加工。近年来,随着认知神经科学技术的发展,研究者进一步探讨了生命性信息在题元角色分配中的神经机制。对于生命性作用机制的深入研究,促使新的语言加工模型的出现,这些模型对语言加工中句法和语义的关系,进行了越来越详尽的阐释。未来该领域的研究应重点关注生命性的即时性加工、题元角色分配中生命性信息与句法信息的交互作用以及汉语和其他语言的跨语言比较研究等,以进一步揭示语言加工的认知机制。

Animacy of nouns has been found significantly impacting the organization and processing of language in many ways. In particular, it imposes restrictions on the syntactic morphology and syntactic position, and the assignment of the thematic roles heavily relies on animacy. By recording reaction times and eye tracking, previous studies revealed that animacy of nouns facilitated comprehension of ambiguous sentences and complex sentences. With the development of cognitive neuroscience techniques, the neural mechanism of how animacy influences the assignment of thematic roles has been further explored during recent years. Some new theoretical models have been proposed to explain the relationship of syntax and semantics during sentence processing in a more comprehensive way. Based on existing studies and theories, we propose that future research should particularly focus on the immediate impact of animacy during online language processing, the interaction of animacy and syntactic information during the assignment of thematic roles, and the cross-language difference of these effects.