Processing Mechanism Of Redundant Negation From Perspective Of Pragmatic Inference:Evidence From ERPs

The majority of previous studies on Chinese redundant negation analyse the patterns from perspectives of constructional grammar or rhetoric.Fewer empirical studies on language processing are conducted from the aspect of pragmatic inference.How is Chinese pattern "buyao tai A" as one of the three typical expressions of redundant negation processed in brain?Whether differences exist when the pattern"buyao tai A" is processed under single pragmatic condition(A as commendatory adjectives)and dual pragmatic condition(A as derogatory adjectives)respectively?These questions still remain unexplored.This study employs event-related potentials technology(ERPs)to explore the neural processing mechanism of Chinese native speakers on redundant negation,conducting a case study on Chinese pattern"buyao tai A" to discuss the differences between the processing mechanism of participants under commendatory and derogatory conditions respectively.The experimental materials involve 180 Chinese sentences,divided into six categories according to adjective sorts and contextual types,namely,commendatory congruent(type A),commendatory incongruent(type B),commendatory unrelated(type C),derogatory congruent(type D),derogatory incongruent(type E),and derogatory unrelated(type F).The experimental stimuli are presented segment by segment to 28 native Chinese speakers who are required to quickly judge the acceptability of the six types of sentences.The behavioural data(accuracy and response time)as well as the EEG(electroencephalogram)data acquired through the experiment are analysed through SPSS and Matlab.The study results show that N400 effect in time window of 350-450 ms and late negativity in time window of 550-700 ms are stimulated under commendatory condition in processing incongruent sentences(type B)and unrelated ones(type C)as compared with the congruent ones(type A).No obvious differences are revealed under derogatory condition.Meanwhile,N400 effect and late negativity occur when comparing the derogatory congruent condition(type D)with the commendatory congruent one(type A).Based upon the above results,this thesis assumes that:1)Native Chinese speakers mainly process the pattern "buyao tai A" through the aspects of semantics and pragmatics rather than syntax.2)Due to the pragmatic constraint of the pattern"buyao tai A",the participants suppress or replace the incongruent existing information to arrive at a new coherent presentations after detecting incongruence or irrelevance.3)Even under the congruent contexts,more efforts are made to extract the accurate meaning from dual semantic or pragmatic information than to process the single one.Even fully-constrained contexts cannot inhibit the processing of the salient meaning of the critical pattern"buyao tai A",which does support the assumption of Giora's Graded Salience Model.In conclusion,informative contexts can promote the extraction and comprehension of pragmatic information in redundant negation,yet differences occur in the processing mechanism under conditions with multiple pragmatic information(derogatory condition)and single one(commendatory one).However,it is noticed that two participants from the regions of Wu dialect show few distinctions when processing sentences under commendatory and derogatory conditions during the experiment.According to the previous studies,transmission of pragmatic meaning of the pattern "buyao tai A"originates from its meaning in Wu dialect.It is assumed that familiarity of participants toward Wu dialect may have an influence on the acceptability of the pattern with pragmatic meaning of exclamation.Hence,future studies may lay emphasis on the impacts of participants' origins on processing mechanisms of redundant negation.