汉语反语认知加工机制的ERP研究

ERP Study on the Cognitive Processing Mechanismof Chinese Verbal Irony

日常会话中包含大量的反语,对于字面义和反语义的理解和加工,心理语言学家Gibbs在上世纪90年代大胆提出,人类认知从根本上讲包含比喻性的加工过程,理解反语并非一定需要理解字面话语所需的认知加工之外的特别加工。Gibbs的这一观点被称为直接通达观,其在神经语用学领域,特别是关于比喻义与字面义的加工问题上颇受争议。包括反语在内的比喻语言理解加工的时间进程的模式或假说除了Gibbs的直接通达观,主要还有标准语用模式和分级突显假说,且相关的实证研究结果存在分歧。我们把问题和争议概括为:1)反语的理解和加工机制是什么样的?是不同于字面语言加工的特殊过程吗?2)就反语而言,上述三大加工模式或假说中哪种更具适用性?本研究以较熟悉的汉语反语为例,在神经语用学的框架下使用事件相关电位技术(ERP)来记录和分析所得到的N400和P600成分。实验发现:1)较熟悉的反语义较之对应的字面义诱发了更大的N400和P600波幅,提示反语义的加工过程经历了不符预期(或语境)的语义整合以及后期语用整合推理,因此是不同于字面语言加工的特殊过程;2)实验结果说明,汉语反语的加工最可能采取的是标准语用模式,而非直接通达观的加工模式。

Ironical utterances(or verbal irony)abound in our daily conversation.As for the understanding and processing of literal meaning and ironical meaning,cognitive psychologist Gibbs boldly put forward the idea in the 1990s that figurative processing is essentially part of human cognition,and the understanding of verbal irony does not necessarily require special processing efforts other than those needed for the understanding of literal language.This is called the Direct Access View(DAV),and this view has caused much controversy in neuropragmatics,especially on the processing of literal and ironical meanings.And two major models or hypotheses have been postulated regarding the time course of figurative language processing(verbal irony included)besides DAV:the Standard Pragmatic Model(SPM)and the Graded Salience Hypothesis(GSH).Many experimental researches have been conducted concerning the above models or hypotheses,but their findings disagree.The disagreements and key problems are summarized and pinned down as:(1)Is the processing of verbal irony a different and special one relative to that of literal language?(2)Which model or hypothesis better suit the processing of verbal irony?Also targeting these disagreements and problems,this study explores the neural mechanism of cognitive processing of comparatively familiar Chinese verbal irony under the research framework of neuropragmatics.An ERP experiment was conducted to record and analyze the N400 and P600 modulations induced by designed stimuli,and the major findings and conclusions are:(1)irony induces lager N400 and P600 modulations relative to its literal counterpart,indicating that the processing of ironical meaning needs more effort for semantic integration caused by expectation or context,and later pragmatic integration and inference,hence a different process from that of literal meaning;(2)processing features indicated by such results most probably fit the processing model predicted by SPM rather than DAV.