Unbalanced Trilinguals’ Cognate Processing in L2 in Isolation and in Sentence Context
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- Keywords: Chinese; English; German; word class; lexical processing
- Abstract: While studies on bilinguals’ cognate processing have commonly examined the cognate facilitative effectas well as its influencingfactors, research on trilinguals’ processing of cognates has been insufficientand the results of existing studies have been inconsistent. The study presented here aimed to investigate how L2–L3 cognates can influenceunbalanced trilinguals’ L2 word recognition both in isolation and in sentence context and examined how word classes could modulate the effect.In a lexical decision task, unbalanced Chinese–English–German trilinguals were required to read cognate and noncognate nouns and verbs in isolation. No cognate effectwas observed. In an eye-monitored sentence-reading task, participants were asked to read the target cognates and noncognates embedded in low-semantic-constraint sentence contexts. A cognate inhibition effectwas observed in nouns, but only in gaze duration, an early-stage measure. Moreover, an uncommon noun processing disadvantage over verbs was observed in both experiments. Results were discussed in relation to language-learning experiences, language-membership ambiguity, and the concreteness effect.
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重点基金项目
N400 Prediction Effects in Relative Constructions
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- Keywords: Chinese relative construction; N400; relatedness proportion; semantic prediction
- Abstract: When a context of a strongly constrained sentence structure is formed, N400 as the ERP component of the follow-up word of the structure will be reduced in amplitude. Two accounts can explain this: a passive activation account and a contextual-based prediction account. A dispute lies in the extent of how each of these accounts influences the N400 element reduction. This issue is addressed in the present paper in Chinese relative construction context by formatting semantically associated Chinese relative construction prime and word target pairs within an experimental context that encouraged prediction. The proportion of related pairs was used to modulate the predictive validity of the relative construction prime for the target while holding constant semantic association. A semantic category probe detection task was used to encourage subjects to process semantic meaning of these experimental pairs without their preferences to the trial content of interest. A larger N400 reduction to related targets was observed in the high-proportion block of relatedness than under the low condition. The results support the hypothesis that N400 effects emerge in the predictions of upcoming input. The results suggest that predictability modulates N400 amplitude in a dominant way in a constrained context like Chinese relative constructions.
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