An ERPs Approach To Verb Gapping In Chinese EFL Learners’ Processing Of English And-coordinated Sentences

In daily communication, language has a variety of elliptical forms, however, readers and listeners still can interpret elliptical meaning in utterances or sentences. Verb Gapping, a type of ellipsis, has been highly concerned by linguists and psychologists. Scholars abroad have typically concentrated on syntactic structures of Verb Gapping, and proposed the deletion accounts and the across-the-board movement approaches. However, the online reactivation of Verb Gapping has been rarely explored, especially for the second language learners. Moreover, there are few studies at home investigating the online reactivation of Verb Gapping by means of ERPs technique. Based on previous studies, the present study aims to further explore the psychological reality of the gapped verb in Chinese EFL learners’ processing of coordinated sentences through ERPs technique, explained by the Sustained Reactivation Hypothesis. Research question is as follows: Is there any electrophysiological evidence to support the hypothesis that the gapped verb is psychologically real in Chinese EFL learners’ processing of English And-Coordinated sentences?The present study is one factor with four conditions(the non-verb gapping group; the verb gapping group; the pseudo-verb group; the control group) within-subject design. Seventeen postgraduate students majoring in English Language and Literature from SISU took part in this experiment. Experimental Materials were presented on the 19-inch computer screen at random. Participants were required to attentively comprehend the four sentence types, followed by interrogative sentences, on which the participants should make semantic judgment. The dependent variables were the ERPs data of the participants when processing the four sentence types. Experimental Materials were programmed by E-prime2.0 and ERPs data were acquired and edited offline by Neuroscan4.5. Then SPSS19.0 was used to analyze the data. The experiment was conducted in the Key Lab of Cognitive Neuroscience and Foreign Language Learning in SISU. The results are concluded as follows:(1) The 0-130 ms time widow: the non-verb gapping group is significantly different from the verb gapping group, such as the peak amplitude [t(134) = 3.678, p = 0.000], and the mean amplitude [t(134) = 5.491, p = 0.000], and the verb gapping group elicits larger N100 amplitude than the non-verb gapping group. Meanwhile, there is no significant difference among the verb gapping, the pseudo-verb and the control groups. Thus, the results indicate that the participants spend more cognitive effort on processing the orthographic information of the gapped verb in a relatively early stage.(2) The 130-270 ms time widow: the non-verb gapping and the verb gapping groups are significantly different, such as the peak amplitude [t(134) = 4.145, p = 0.000], and the mean amplitude [t(134) = 4.458, p = 0.000], and the non-verb gapping group elicits larger P200 amplitude than the verb gapping group, revealing that the participants could continue to make up the gapped verb information in higher-order perceptual process, where the reconstruction of the gapped verb is weaker than the processing of the overt verb.(3) The 270-600 ms time window: the non-verb gapping group is significantly different from the verb gapping group in the latency [t(134) = 2.015, p = 0.046], the peak amplitude [t(134) = 3.612, p = 0.000], and the mean amplitude [t(134) = 4.917, p = 0.000], and the verb gapping group elicits larger N400 amplitude than the non-verb gapping group, suggesting that it takes more cognitive effort to reconstruct the semantic information of the gapped verb.(4) The 700-1500 ms time window: there is significant difference between the non-verb gapping and the verb gapping groups in the mean amplitude [t(134) =-4.534, p=0.000], reflecting that verb gapping and non-verb gapping structures may differ in deep semantic integration.In summary, according to the Sustained Reactivation Hypothesis, the gapped verb is reactivated by the conjunction and and highly parallel syntactic structures. Compared with the processing of overt verbs, it takes more cognitive effort to reconstruct orthographic and semantic information of gapped verbs. Besides, verb gapping and non-verb gapping structures may differ in deep semantic integration. Therefore, there is electrophysiological evidence to support the hypothesis that the gapped verb is psychologically real in Chinese EFL learners’ processing of English And-Coordinated sentences.