The Processing Of Adjective-Noun Construction In Mandarin Chinese

The adjective-noun construction is the most typical attribute-head construction in Mandarin Chinese.Up to date,lots of theoretical studies have been made on this construction,but its corresponding empirical research is relatively scarce.As a result,it is unknown how our brain works in the processing of this construction.Against this background,this thesis used two experiments to explore the processing mechanism of adjective-noun constructions,hopefully helping people have a comprehensive understanding of the adjective-noun construction from a psychological point of view.Experiment One used self-paced reading to investigate how the frequency and concreteness affect the processing of Chinese adjective-noun constructions.The experiment was conducted by adopting a 2(high vs.low frequency)x 2(abstractness vs.concreteness)within-subjects design.The results show that the processing of this construction is affected by the frequency of the whole construction: the higher the construction’s frequency is,the faster the construction is processed.As the head noun’s frequency is high,the noun’s perception is not influenced by its concreteness.The integrated processing of the adjective-noun construction can be modulated by the frequency of the whole construction: participants performed better in both the correctness and reaction time when the frequency of whole construction is high.But it is not affected by the concreteness of the head noun.The results is consistent with the usage-based account of language in cognitive linguistics.The linguistic units that frequently co-occur can function as a chunk and thus be extracted as a whole,making the processing faster.However,the concreteness effect of the head noun may be suppressed by the frequency effect,so this experiment did not appear in the present experiment.Experiment Two adopted an eye tracking paradigm to explore whether the prenominal adjective can predict the processing of the adjective-noun construction,aiming to examine whether the prenominal adjective can predict its head noun in processing Chinese adjective-noun constructions and whether context can facilitate the predictive effect of prenominal adjectives if there is.It was designed as a 2(the adjectives of high predictability vs.the adjectives of low predictability)x 2(the neutral context vs.the biased context)within-subjects experiment.The results show a significant predictive effect on total reading time(TT): the participants spend less time in the constructions with adjectives of high predictability(i.e.,the adjectives that can predict the head noun accurately)than in constructions with adjectives of low predictability(i.e.,the adjectives that can not predict the head noun accurately),demonstrating that a head noun’s processing could be affected by the predictability of its modifier adjective in the adjective-noun construction.Moreover,the context exerts a greater effect on the adjectives of low predictabilitythan the corresponding adjectives of high predictability.That is,the prenominal adjective of low predictability facilitates the processing of both its head noun and the corresponding construction in biased context,whereas the predictive effect for adjective of high predictability is less affected by the context it occurs in,indicating that the context can modulate the prediction,especially for the adjectives with low predictability.The results show that both lexical and contextual information play crucial roles in processing the adjective-noun construction.When processing the adjectives of high predictability,people only need to extract relevant information stored in their brain and then process the construction quickly,while due to the prediction error cost,the processing of the construction will become slow in the case of the adjectives of low predictability.Similarly,the biased context can provide more effective information,thus making the processing more quickly.This thesis provides new evidence for the processing mechanism of the adjective-noun construction in natural languages.For one thing,the experiments reveal the factors that can affect the processing of the adjective-noun construction,the predictive effect of the adjectives as modifier on the upcoming noun in the construction,and the modulating effect of context on the prediction.For the other,this study initiates the research on Chinese adjective-noun constructions from the perspective of psycholinguistics and is supposed to serve as a guiding reference for other complex constructions in Mandarin Chinese.