| The formal study on disordered linguistic phenomena can be traced back to Rawlinson’s Ph D thesis entitled The significance of letter position in word recognition in1976, in which the concept of letter transposition was first proposed. His findings indicate that the positions of internal letters in words have little effect on skilled readers in understanding printed text. Hereafter, scholars did not pay much attention to the special linguistic phenomena until a paragraph named Cambridge University effect was spread widely across foreign linguistic study forums in September 2003. The paragraph indicates that it doesn’t matter what order the letters in a word adopt, the only important thing is that the first and last letter be at the right place. As an interesting language phenomenon, words that are misplaced but do not affect reading have aroused great interest among netizens and many high quality research results have been achieved.However, despite these research results, we can easily find that the existing researches are fragmented and lack an effective integration, which is reflected in unbalanced research results, shortage of a unified classification standard and a variation range of disordered language signs that do not affect reading. On the one hand, compared with the abundant research results about transposed-letter words in alphabetic writing,the research concerning other non-alphabetic writings is very poor, especially in-depth and systematic comparative studies of the processing of disordered language signs from a cross-linguistic angle. Although the idea of a “perceptual uncertainty” principle of position assignment may be universal to all orthographic systems, the specific characteristics of a given language may constrain the transposed-letter effect. On the other hand, the methodology of previous studies is simple. Almost all studies wereheavily influenced by formalistic modularity and divided language unit into sound, form and meaning. From the perspective of psychology, the previous studies used lexical recognition or lexical decision as the main research method, response time as the main analytical index to analyze the influence of letter transposition on lexical encoding, and have rarely combined the latest linguistic theories to analyze this linguistic phenomenon in depth.Therefore, the present study starts with the detailed classification of disordered language signs in English and Chinese on the basis of construction grammar. And then,two eye movement experiments were conducted to record normal English and Chinese skilled readers’ eye movement features during reading sentences with disordered language signs by means of Tobii T120 eye tracker. At last, the eye movement features and the semantic construction of disordered sentences are analyzed in depth. The specific research questions are as follows:(1) What are the possible types of disordered language signs in English and Chinese?(2) What are the global eye movement features during reading English and Chinese sentences with disordered language signs?(3) What are the local eye movement features in processing English and Chinese different disordered language structures?(4) How to determine a variation range of English and Chinese disordered language signs that do not affect reading?(5) How do readers construct the semantic meaning of English and Chinese disordered structures?Through the design of experimental materials, a careful analysis and discussion of the experimental data, and the establishment of a semantic construction model, five findings are reported as follows:First of all, on the basis of the relation between symbolic units and constructions,the types of disordered language signs in English and Chinese can be classified into four groups. They are disordered language signs within symbolic units, disordered languagesigns across symbolic units, disordered language signs within constructions and disordered language signs across constructions. Due to the differences in orthographies,different specific categories are produced in the classification of each subclass. On the whole, the disordered language signs in English are primarily within and across symbolic units, but the disordered language signs in Chinese are mainly within symbolic units.Secondly, in terms of the global eye movement features, the reading speed, fixation density, saccade amplitude and regression counts in English and Chinese sentence reading are all affected by the four types of disorders. In general, the disruption of disordered language signs within symbolic units and constructions to reading is less than disordered language signs across symbolic units and constructions. Both in liner syllabic script and two-dimensional graphic characters, due to the limitation of human beings’ perceptual span, the disordered language signs across the boundary of symbolic units and constructions lead to significant reduction in reading speed and saccade amplitude, and significant increase in fixation density and regression counts. However, thanks to the advantage in visual form-meaning perception, the overall disruption of disordered language signs to Chinese sentence reading is less than that to English, which is especially reflected in regression counts. Compared with normal sentence reading, the regression counts in English disordered sentences increase by about 2.3 times, but only about 0.3 times in Chinese disordered sentences.Thirdly, with reference to the local eye movement features, not all disordered language signs can activate semantic representation of prototypical symbolic units. The effect of English and Chinese disordered language signs on fixation duration, fixation counts and regression counts depends on the identity and position of disordered units.Overall, with regard to English and Chinese disordered language signs within symbolic units, the processing costs vary with the number of transposed letters, the proximity of transposed language units in position and the visual similarity of disordered language signs. Specially speaking, the less the number of transposed letters, the more proximate the transposed language units in position; the more similar the disordered language signs are, the less the processing cost is, and vice versa. As for the disordered language signsacross symbolic units, the processing cost of English and Chinese disordered language signs depends on the number of involved symbolic units. Namely, the more the number of involved symbolic units is, the more difficult to recognize the whole words.Fourthly, concerning the accuracy of reading comprehension, the disruption of disordered language signs within symbolic units and constructions to English and Chinese sentences is less, getting above 90% correct. With regard to the disordered language signs across symbolic units and constructions, the correct rates of English disordered sentences are very low, reaching 51% and 46% respectively. In contrast, the correct rates of Chinese disordered sentences are still high, getting 94% and 72%respectively. It indicates that Chinese has an advantage in visual form-meaning perception and a strong fault tolerance, and it is not vulnerable to various transpositions of language signs.The last finding is that, in the case of the semantic construction of disordered structures, although there are many differences between English and Chinese in lexical attributes, there are some fundamental rules shared by the two languages in semantic construction(Rayner 1995, 1998). Disordered sentences reading is an advanced and complex cognitive process. On the basis of foveal fixation and parafoveal preview,readers use the information extracted from language materials to make simultaneous predications about the constructional types and semantic relations. At the same time, in terms of similar Prototype-Extension Relation and matched Autonomy-Dependence Relation, combined with the encyclopedic knowledge in the long-term memory, the orders of the symbolic units and the e-site of dependence structure are reorganized by virue of increasing regressions and fixation counts. After making inferences in brain,these sentences’ ordered semantic representation is constructed quickly from the disordered language signs. In a word, reading comprehension of disordered sentences is an active and creative process. Within the variation range, as long as there is semantic satiation, the sentences with disordered language signs are meaningful, at least can be interpreted.The innovativeness of this study lies mainly in the following aspects:The first point of the innovativeness of this study is embodied in research contents.Based on the previous research, we extend the research scope of disordered language signs to a comparative study between English and Chinese that belong to different language families with different orthographies, which not only creates a new research dimension of the disordered language signs, but also improves the extremely unbalanced research situation of English and Chinese disordered language signs, presenting an in-depth, systematic and comprehensive study in this field. Perceptual uncertainty in position assignment is universal to all orthographic systems, although the specific characteristics of different languages may restrict the effect of transposed-language signs.From the perspective of construction grammar, the disordered language signs in English and Chinese are classified in details from the aspect of symbolic units and constructions,which not only unifies the standard of classification, but also breaks traditional studies’ limitations, extending the research contents of disordered language signs from similar Prototype-Extension Relation to matched Autonomy-Dependence Relation. Our researches explore a new research approach for the study of disordered language signs,making the study of disordered language signs more systematic, and helping conduct deep and systematic study in this field.The second innovation point of this study is embodied in research method. We combine eye movement data analysis and comparative study, focusing on the combination of qualitative and quantitative methods and the combination of description and interpretation. Two experiments are carried out to explore readers’ eye movement features in reading English and Chinese sentences with disordered language signs. By referring to seven selected eye movement indexes, the effects of various disordered symbolic units on reading comprehension are analyzed from global and local aspects.These experiments not only provide an empirical support for the cognitive model of comprehending English and Chinese disordered sentences, avoiding the subjectivity of cognitive study, but also determine a variation range of disordered language signs that do not affect reading. The findings also make clear the flexibility of position coding and the fault tolerance in English and Chinese. The study will inspire the researches of languagerecognition and understanding.The last point of the innovativeness of this study is embodied in theoretical construction. On the basis of eye movement data analysis and the relevant theories of cognitive linguistics, reading psychology and oculomotor control in reading, the cognitive processes and semantic construction of disordered sentences are analyzed in depth, and a semantic construction model is created for English and Chinese disordered sentences. The cognitive model shows how language system, cognitive system and visual system coordinate to suppress interference and extract ordered information from disordered language signs, and integrate the information into a coherent semantic representation. The findings also provide a valuable analytical and interpretative framework for the study of disordered language signs in other languages.The study not only provides a new and powerful explanation to this special linguistic phenomenon, but also helps people recognize general linguistic facts from particular and special linguistic phenomena. The present study also contributes to deepening people’s understanding of the basic cognitive laws that brain processes language, providing a new research paradigm for unveiling the mystery of brain that can process language information quickly. In addition, the study brings about enlightenments for many other aspects, such as language teaching, the treatment of dyslexic and the development of artificial intelligence. |
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