An Reaction Time Research On The Processing Of Different Types Of Chinese Casuals

Cause and effect is one of the most basic relation between events in the world and causals are the most common way to record such a relation linguistically.Although there are many ways to form a Chinese causal,the typical way is to use the construction of“因为……,所以……”。Although most theoretical researches done from the perspective of pragmatics and cognitive linguistics make classifications of causals, they have no empirical evidence to prove that there is difference in the processing of different types of causals. Besides, few studies done from the cognitive neurolinguistic approach concern the difference in the reaction time of processing different types of causals.What is more, so far no study focuses on Chinese causals from this perspective. Liao Qiaoyun(2011) discusses the construal mechanism of the logical causal construction and the evidential causal construction, but there is still no empirical evidence to support the construal mechanism Liao proposes. Therefore, the present study attempts to investigate the difference in the reaction time of processing three different types of Chinese causals, and future to testify the construal mechanism of causals proposed by Liao Qiaoyun.Two research questions are proposed:(1) Is there any difference in the reaction time of processing the three different types of Chinese causals, namely the logical causal, the evidential causal without marker, and the evidential causal with marker?(2) Whether the construal mechanism of causals proposed by Liao Qiaoyun(2011) is reasonable or not?A behavioral experiment is conducted in this research. The experiment materials consist of 25 groups of causal, with 3 groups used in the practice mode before the actual experiment. Each group consists of one logical causal, one evidential causal without marker, one evidential causal with marker and one false causal. The length of all the causals are controlled to be within 14 ~ 20 words. Thirtystudents from SISU postgraduate school are invited to participate in the experiment.In the experiment, the sentences are presented to the participants randomly, and then the sentence will disappear automatically after 5000 ms. Afterwards a scale of acceptance degree will appear on the screen. The participants are required to respond as soon as the scale of acceptance degree appeared on the screen. They are supposed to judge whether the sentence presented before is acceptable or not by pressing a certain key on the keyboard of the computer according to the scale of acceptance degree.After the data is analyzed, the results can be summarized as follows:(1) In the case of the logical causal and the evidential causal without marker, there is a significant distinction in the processing time of the two types(t =-2.912, p = 0.008).The mean reaction time of the logical causal(m = 828.85 ms) is much shorter than that of the evidential causal without marker(m = 1108.97 ms);(2) In the case of the evidential causal without marker and the evidential causal with marker, there is also a significant distinction in the processing time of the two types(t =-2.212, p =0.031). The mean reaction time of the evidential causal without marker(m = 1108.97ms) is much longer than that of the evidential causal with marker(m = 730.42 ms);(3) In the case of the logical causal and the evidential causal with marker, although the reaction time of the logical causal(m = 828.85 ms) is slightly longer than that of the evidential causal with marker(m = 730.42 ms), according to the statistics of the paired sample t-test(t =-0.791, p = 0.264), there is not a significant distinction in the processing time between the two types of causals.According to the results of the experiment, the conclusions of the research come as follows:(1) There is difference in the reaction time of processing the three different types of Chinese causals. The processing time of logical causal is shorter than that of evidential causal. However, the presence of the marker in an evidential causal can facilitate the processing, and thus shorten the processing time.(2) The results of the research prove that the construal mechanism of causals proposed byLiao Qiaoyun(2011) is reasonable.