The Roles Of Familiarity And Context In Metaphorical Chinese Two-part Allegorical Saying Processing:An ERP Study

Two-part allegorical sayings are a subcategory of Chinese idiomatic expressions,and most of them can be further categorized as homophonic or metaphorical,according to how their figurative meaning is constructed.Between these two types,metaphorical two-part allegorical sayings account for a significantly larger proportion and have received greater attention from researchers.Previous studies have been focused on the source,classification,semantic construction as well as translation problems of Chinese two-part allegorical sayings,but seldom explored their online processing mechanism with experimental approaches.Moreover,although accumulating evidence on the familiarity and contextual effects have been received from empirical studies on nonliteral language processing,such topic have not been discussed in depth specifically in the case of two-part allegorical sayings.Therefore,this study attempts to investigate the online processing mechanism of metaphorical two-part allegorical sayings with an Event-Related Potentials（ERP）experiment,focusing on three research questions,namely: 1)What roles do familiarity and linguistic context play respectively in metaphorical Chinese two-part allegorical saying processing? 2)Are the prevailing models of nonliteral language processing,namely the Standard Pragmatics Model（SPM）,the Direct Access Model（DAM）and the Graded Salience Hypothesis（GSH）,able to give satisfactory accounts for the processing mechanism of metaphorical two-part allegorical sayings? 3)Are the antecedents able to be used independently?An ERP experiment in 2（high familiarity,HF/low familiarity,LF）x 2（literally-biasing context,LC/metaphorically biasing context,MC）design,with two-character Chinese words serving as the Primes,the antecedents serving as the Targets and consequents as the Probes,was then performed.The behavioral results demonstrated that 1)the participants had significantly faster reactions when judging the HF metaphorical Chinese two-part allegorical sayings;2)in the MC condition,the participants had lower accuracy rate in judging the LF metaphorical Chinese two-part allegorical sayings.The ERP data of the Targets showed that: 1)in the LC condition,the late N400 amplitude elicited by HF antecedents was significantly smaller than that of LF ones.2)in the MC condition,the N400 amplitude elicited by HF antecedents was significantly smaller than that of LF ones;3)the early but not the late N400 amplitude elicited by HF antecedents had significant difference in the LC and MC conditions;4)difference of the N400 amplitude elicited by LF antecedents was not significant in the LC and MC conditions.The ERP data of Probes showed that the N400 amplitude elicited by HF consequents was significantly smaller than that of LF ones in both types of contexts.Based on both the behavioral and the ERP results,for the first question,this study has found that 1)In general,familiarity plays an important role in metaphorical two-part allegorical saying processing.HF antecedents can be taken as the vehicles of conventional metaphors,whose metaphorical meaning can be directly activated upon encounter;meanwhile,the antecedents and consequents of HF two-part allegorical sayings are represented as chunks in mental lexicon,therefore further analysis and reasoning processes are not necessarily involved in processing;Besides,LF antecedents can be regarded as the vehicles of novel metaphors,whose metaphorical meaning can hardly be activated in a direct manner,but derived from their compositional meaning;furthermore,LF two-part allegorical sayings are not presented as a whole in mental lexicon,so that extra reasoning processes are required for comprehenders to make sense of the interrelationship between the two parts;2)Metaphorical Chinese two-part allegorical saying processing are influenced by contextual information.In the MC condition,the metaphorical meaning of HF antecedents can be quickly activated and retained by the compatible context.In the LC condition,however,the metaphorical meaning of HF antecedents is suppressed but the literal meaning can be activated driven by contextual information.For the second question,this study has found that 1)The SPM model receives some evidence from the processing of LF two-part allegorical sayings;2)The DAM model may to some extent account for the mechanism of HF Chinese two-part allegorical saying processing,but fails to explain the case of LF ones;3)The GSH can provide an acceptable explanation for the processing mechanism of Chinese two-part allegorical sayings varying in familiarity.For the third question,this study has concluded that only HF antecedents can be used independently.