汉语简单及物结构中题元关系加工的脑电研究

ERP Correlates of Thematic Relation Processing in Chinese Simple Transitive Sentences

在外文的语义违背研究中,题元关系与语义P600的产生有关。通过操纵受事名词短语与及物动词之间不同的语义关系,考察了把字简单及物句(实验1)和普通及物句(实验2)中的语义加工过程。其中实验2的材料是由实验1的材料通过句子改写而得。结果发现:两种简单及物结构在关键区的语义加工中有着相似的脑电模式。与正常句条件相比,两种违背条件均能诱发N400和语义P600。两种违背条件相比,仅在普通及物句中发现其能诱发波幅更大的N400和P600。研究结果表明:脑电波幅的大小反映着对语境的持续分析,N400对语义违背信息敏感,P600的产生与题元角色指派信息的违背有关,这为汉语研究题元关系与语义P600的产生提供了实验证据。

In Western semantic violation studies,thematic relation was considered to be related with semantic P600.The aim of this ERP research was to examine the Chinese semantic processing in regard to the different relations between the patient noun phrase and the agentive verb within Chinese ba-structure and simple transitive structure,separately in experiment one and experiment two.The present study manipulated three types of semantic relations between the patient noun phrase and the verb,respectively as highly,closely and distantly related,constituting one congruent condition and two violated ones.The materials in experiment two were rewritten from experiment one,transferring transitive ba-structure into a simple transitive one.The findings showed that on the critical region,the processing of the two transitive structures had similar ERP patterns.For the two violated conditions,comparing with the congruent one,both evoked an N400 and a semantic P600.Moreover,only in experiment two did we find that semantic distantly related violation condition,compared with the other violated condition,could evoke a larger N400 and P600.Our findings suggested that the amplitude of ERP waveform could be a reflection on the continuous analysis of the context,with possible explanations that the N400 was sensitive to semantic violation;and the P600,to the violation of the original clear thematic relation.