The Cognitive Processing Of Noun-Noun Construction In Mandarin Chinese

Attribute-head construction is one of the most common and complex constructions in natural languages.This construction is called a compound word at the lexical level and an attribute-head phrase at the syntactic level.As a kind of attribute-head construction,the noun-noun construction in Mandarin Chinese has mostly been studied theoretically,but there are relatively few empirical studies on the construction.Previous theoretical studies focus on the explicit and implicit conditions of the attributive marker de(的)in the construction and its related semantic changes.Meanwhile,among the noun-noun constructions,some attributive nouns take on adjective-like attributes,i.e.,the first nouns seem to have gone through word class conversion from noun to adjective and be endowed with an idiomatic meaning,thus becoming adjectivized nouns.However,it is still unknown whether and how the explicit or implicit de and the adjectivized nouns may affect the cognitive processing of noun-noun constructions in Mandarin Chinese.This thesis aims to investigate the issues mentioned above by virtue of three psychological experiments.Experiment one used self-paced reading to examine the effect of de on the processing of noun-noun construction.The results show that explicit or implicit de does affect the processing of noun-noun construction,but this effect is modulated by the overall semantic category(literal meaning/non-literal meaning)of the construction,suggesting a greater impact on the non-literal noun-noun construction.The results can be explained by Cognitive Distance Hypothesis.Short cognitive distance between attributive noun and head noun indicates high degree of integration and less processing difficulty,while long cognitive distance between attributive noun and head noun indicates low degree of integration and more processing difficulty.Experiment two also adopted self-paced reading to explore the effect of [±adjectivized nouns] on the processing of decontextualized noun-noun construction.The results indicate that the adjectivized nouns can have a significant effect on the processing of noun-noun construction.Compared with the literal noun-noun construction with [-adjectivized nouns],the non-literal noun-noun construction with [+adjectivized nouns] is easier to process,which is caused by the processing difference between non-compositional(non-literal/metaphorical)chunk and compositional(literal)construction.The non-compositional chunk enjoys a higher degree of integration,thus demanding less cognitive resources and being processed more quickly.Experiment three adopted the methodology of eye tracking to further explore the effect of[±adjectivized nouns] on the processing of contextualized noun-noun construction.The results demonstrate that the adjectivized nouns bring a significant effect to the processing of noun-nounconstruction.The processing time of non-literal noun-noun construction with [+adjectivized nouns] is shorter than the literal noun-noun construction with [-adjectivized nouns].The context has no significant effect on the processing of two kinds of noun-noun constructions.As a whole,the experimental results support the direct access model and the non-literal meaning priority mode.The thesis is supposed to enrich the research methods on processing of noun-noun construction in Mandarin Chinese and provide empirical evidence for previous theoretical studies in the meanwhile.Furthermore,this study not only helps to deepen the theoretical understanding of Chinese constructions,but also provides a direct and practical guidance for Chinese information processing and teaching Chinese as a foreign language.