Cognitive Animacy Shift In Chinese Reading Comprehension

Life is a complex,interdisciplinary topic,and its embodiment in languages is the semantic property of animacy.From the perspective of cognitive linguistics,on the one hand,cognitive animacy refers to the prototypical,anthropocentric,and egocentric mental representation of the semantic property on the basis of conceptualization,which fundamentally determines relevant language patterns.On the other hand,context can also affect animacy,leading to a cognitive animacy shift.Previous research lacked interpretation of the cognitive animacy shift process within the cognitive framework,and few studies have focused on the cognitive animacy shift in the Chinese language and natural reading process.Therefore,this study aims to investigate the cognitive animacy shift in Chinese reading comprehension by using self-paced reading technology.A 2×2 two-factor within-participant design was adopted in the experiment.The story discourses served as experimental materials.The independent variables were the animacy of the main character nouns(high vs.low)and the animacy of the critical sentence predicates(high vs.low).The main dependent variables were the reading times of the critical and spillover regions.The word frequency and strokes of the critical words were controlled by pre-tests so that they did not interfere with the effect of dependent variables.The formal experiment adopted the self-paced reading paradigm.The participants pressed the space bar in order to read the stories and to obtain and understand the information in the context sentences and the critical sentence.Through the analysis of the reading times in critical and spillover regions under the four conditions,we explored two research questions:(1)Can context shift cognitive animacy in Chinese reading comprehension?(2)If yes,will the shifted cognitive animacy interact with prior language knowledge in Chinese reading comprehension?E-Prime 2.0 was used for programming,formal experiments,and data recording.Participants read 10 practice stories,48 critical stories,and 72 filler stories.The experimental data were examined through linear mixed models in R.The experimental results are as follows:(1)Context significantly shifted the cognitive animacy of low-animacy nouns.Specifically,when low-animacy nouns were matched with high-animacy predicates,the reading times of the final regions were significantly shorter than those when low-animacy nouns were matched with low-animacy predicates.(2)The cognitive animacy of low-animacy nouns was shifted,but the prior language knowledge was still at work.Specifically,when low-animacy nouns were collocated with low-animacy predicates,the reading times in the critical and post-critical regions were significantly shorter than those when high-animacy nouns were collocated with low-animacy predicates.In summary,context can shift cognitive animacy,and the shifted cognitive animacy interacts with prior language knowledge in Chinese reading comprehension.This study provides experimental evidence for the cognitive animacy shift and contributes to the development of cognitive animacy theory.