Abstract
In the present study, we examined the time course of semantic and syntactic processing when Chinese is read. Readers’ eye movements were monitored, and the relation between a single-character critical word and the sentence context was manipulated such that three kinds of sentences were developed: (1) congruent, (2) those with a semantic violation, and (3) those with both a semantic and a syntactic violation. The eye movement data showed that the first-pass reading times were significantly longer for the target region in the two violation conditions than in the congruent condition. Moreover, the semantic + syntactic violation caused more severe disruption than did the pure semantic violation, as reflected by longer first-pass reading times for the target region and by longer go-past times for the target region and posttarget region in the former than in the latter condition. These results suggest that the effects of, at least, a semantic violation can be detected immediately by Chinese readers and that the processing of syntactic and semantic information is distinct in both first-pass and second-pass reading.
References
Aaronson, D., &Ferres, S. (1986). Sentence processing in Chinese-American bilinguals.Journal of Memory & Language,25, 136–162. doi:10.1016/0749-596X(86)90026-4
Baayen, R. H. (2008).Analyzing linguistic data: A practical introduction to statistics using R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Baayen, R. H., Davidson, D. J., &Bates, D. M. (2008). Mixedeffects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items.Journal of Memory & Language,59, 390–412. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2007.12.005
Bader, M., &Lasser, I. (1994). German verb-final clauses and sentence processing: Evidence for immediate attachment. In C. Clifton, Jr., L. Frazier, & K. Rayner (Eds.),Perspectives on sentence processing (pp. 225–242). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Bates, D. M., Maechler, M., &Dai, B. (2008). lme4: Linear mixedeffect models using S4 classes. R package version 0.999375-1 [Software]. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing.
Birch, S., &Rayner, K. (1997). Linguistic focus affects eye movements during reading.Memory & Cognition,25, 653–660.
Boland, J. E. (1997). The relationship between syntactic and semantic processes in sentence comprehension.Language & Cognitive Processes,12, 423–484. doi:10.1080/016909697386808
Braze, D., Shankweiler, D., Ni, W., &Palumbo, L. C. (2002). Readers’ eye movements distinguish anomalies of form and content.Journal of Psycholinguistic Research,31, 25–44.
Chao, Y. R. (1968).A grammar of spoken Chinese. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Chen, H.-C. (1992). Reading comprehension in Chinese: Some implications from character reading times. In H.-C. Chen & O. Tzeng (Eds.),Language processing in Chinese (pp. 175–205). Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Chen, H.-C. (1996). Chinese reading and comprehension: A cognitive psychology perspective. In M. H. Bond (Ed.),Handbook of Chinese psychology (pp. 43–62). Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.
Chen, H.-C. (1999). How do readers of Chinese process words during reading for comprehension? In J. Wang, A. W. Inhoff, & H.-C. Chen (Eds.),Reading Chinese script: A cognitive analysis (pp. 257–278). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Chen, H.-C., &Juola, J. F. (1982). Dimensions of lexical coding in Chinese and English.Memory & Cognition,10, 216–224.
Chen, H.-C., &Shu, H. (2001). Lexical activation during the recognition of Chinese characters: Evidence against early phonological activation.Psychonomic Bulletin & Review,8, 511–518.
Chen, H.-C., Song, H., Lau, W. Y., Wong, K. F. E., &Tang, S. L. (2003). Developmental characteristics of eye movements in reading Chinese. In C. McBride-Chang & H.-C. Chen (Eds.),Reading development in Chinese children (pp. 157–169). Westport, CT: Praeger.
Chen, H.-C., &Zhou, X. (1999). Processing East Asian languages: An introduction.Language & Cognitive Processes,14, 425–428. doi:10.1080/016909699386130
Cheung, H., Chen, H.-C., Lai, C. Y., Wong, O. C., &Hills, M. (2001). The development of phonological awareness: Effects of speech experience, orthography, and literacy.Cognition,81, 227–241. doi:10.1016/ S0010-0277(01)00136-6
Crocker, M. W. (1994). On the nature of the principle-based sentence processor. In C. Clifton, Jr., L. Frazier, & K. Rayner (Eds.),Perspectives on sentence processing (pp. 245–266). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Cutler, A., &Otake, T. (1994). Mora or phoneme? Further evidence for language-specific listening.Journal of Memory & Language,33, 824–844. doi:10.1006/jmla.1994.1039
Danks, J. H. (1986). Identifying component processes in reading: Comment on Haberlandt and Graesser.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,115, 198–200.
Danks, J. H., Bohn, L., &Fears, R. (1983). Comprehension processes in oral reading. In G. B. Flores d’Arcais & R. J. Jarvella (Eds.),The process of language understanding (pp. 193–223). Chichester, U.K.: Wiley.
Drieghe, D., Rayner, K., &Pollatsek, A. (2008). Mislocated fixations can account for parafoveal-on-foveal effects in eye movements during reading.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,61, 1239–1249. doi:10.1080/17470210701467953
Duffy, S. A., Morris, R. K., &Rayner, K. (1988). Lexical ambiguity and fixation times in reading.Journal of Memory & Language,27, 429–446. doi:10.1016/0749-596X(88)90066-6
Ehrlich, K., &Rayner, K. (1983). Pronoun assignment and semantic integration during reading: Eye movements and immediacy of processing.Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior,22, 75–87.
Fan, X. (2007). Regularity and flexibility of grammatical constructions.Hanyu Xuexi [Chinese Language Learning],158, 3–11.
Feng, G., Miller, K., Shu, H., &Zhang, H. (2001). Rowed to recovery: The use of phonological and orthographic information in reading Chinese and English.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,27, 1079–1100. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.27.4.1079
Frazier, L., &Rayner, K. (1982). Making and correcting errors during sentence comprehension: Eye movements in the analysis of structurally ambiguous sentences.Cognitive Psychology,14, 178–210.
Friederici, A. D., Pfeifer, E., &Hahne, A. (1993). Event-related brain potentials during natural speech processing: Effects of semantic, morphological and syntactic violations.Cognitive Brain Research,1, 183–192. doi:10.1016/0926-6410(93)90026-2
Gandour, J., Wong, D., Lowe, M., Dzemidzic, M., Satthamnuwong, N., Tong, Y., &Li, X. (2002). A cross-linguistic fMRI study of spectral and temporal cues underlying phonological processing.Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience,14, 1076–1087. doi:10.1162/089892902320474526
Gunter, T. C., Stowe, L., &Mulder, G. (1997). When syntax meets semantics.Psychophysiology,34, 660–676.
Hahne, A., &Friederici, A. D. (2002). Differential task effects on semantic and syntactic processes as revealed by ERPs. Cognitive Brain Research,13, 339–356. doi:10.1016/S0926-6410(01)00127-6
Just, M. A., &Carpenter, P. A. (1980). A theory of reading: From eye fixations to comprehension.Psychological Review,87, 329–354.
Kambe, G., Rayner, K., &Duffy, S. A. (2001). Global context effects on processing lexically ambiguous words: Evidence from eye fixations.Memory & Cognition,29, 363–372.
Liu, Y. (1990).Xiandai Hanyu changyongci cipin cidian [Modern Chinese word frequency dictionary]. Beijing: Yuhang Press.
Magliano, J. P., Graesser, A. C., Eymard, L. A., Haberlandt, K., &Gholson, B. (1993). Locus of interpretive and inference processes during text comprehension: A comparison of gaze durations and word reading times.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,19, 704–709. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.19.3.704
McElree, B., &Griffith, T. (1995). Syntactic and thematic processing in sentence comprehension: Evidence for a temporal dissociation.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,21, 134–157.
Nuthmann, A., Engbert, R., &Kliegl, R. (2005). Mislocated fixations during reading and the inverted optimal viewing position effect.Vision Research,45, 2201–2217. doi:10.1016/j.visres.2005.02.014
Rayner, K. (1998). Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of research.Psychological Bulletin,124, 372–422.
Rayner, K., Cook, A. E., Juhasz, B. J., &Frazier, L. (2006). Immediate disambiguation of lexically ambiguous words during reading: Evidence from eye movements. British Journal of Psychology,97, 467–482. doi:10.1348/000712605X89363
Rayner, K., &Duffy, S. A. (1986). Lexical complexity and fixation times in reading: Effects of word frequency, verb complexity, and lexical ambiguity.Memory & Cognition,14, 191–201.
Rayner, K., &Frazier, L. (1989). Selection mechanisms in reading lexically ambiguous words.Journal of Experiment Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,15, 779–790.
Rayner, K., &Juhasz, B. J. (2004). Eye movements in reading: Old questions and new directions.European Journal of Cognitive Psychology,16, 340–352. doi:10.1080/09541440340000385
Rayner, K., &Pollatsek, A. (1989).The psychology of reading. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Rayner, K., Warren, T., Juhasz, B. J., &Liversedge, S. P. (2004). The effect of plausibility on eye movements in reading.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,30, 1290–1301. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.30.6.1290
Rayner, K., White, S. J., Kambe, G., Miller, B., &Liversedge, S. P. (2003). On the processing of meaning from parafoveal vision during eye fixations in reading. In J. Hyönä, R. Radach, & H. Deubel (Eds.), The mind’s eye: Cognitive and applied aspects of eye movements (pp. 213–234). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
R Development Core Team (2008).R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Available at www.R-project.org.
Rösler, F., Pütz, P., Friederici, A. D., &Hahne, A. (1993). Eventrelated brain potentials while encountering semantic and syntactic constraint violations.Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience,5, 345–362. doi:10.1162/jocn.1993.5.3.345
Schirmer, A., Tang, S.-L., Penney, T. B., Gunter, T. C., &Chen, H.-C. (2005). Brain responses to segmentally induced semantic violations in Cantonese.Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience,17, 1–12. doi:10.1162/0898929052880057
Sereno, S. C., O’Donnell, P., &Rayner, K. (2006). Eye movements and lexical ambiguity resolution: Investigating the subordinate bias effect.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,32, 335–350. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.32.2.335
Sereno, S. C., &Rayner, K. (2003). Measuring word recognition in reading: Eye movements and event-related potentials.Trends in Cognitive Sciences,7, 489–493. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2003.09.010
Shi, D. X. (2000). The flexibility of Chinese syntax and the theory of syntax.Dangdai Yuyanxue [Contemporary Linguistics],2, 18–26.
Starr, M. S., &Rayner, K. (2001). Eye movements during reading: Some current controversies.Trends in Cognitive Sciences,5, 156–163. doi:10.1016/S1364-6613(00)01619-3
Sturt, P., &Crocker, M. (1996). Monotonic syntactic processing: A cross-linguistic study of attachment and reanalysis.Language & Cognitive Processes,11, 449–494. doi:10.1080/016909696387123
Van Berkum, J., Hagoort, P., &Brown, C. M. (1999). Semantic integration in sentences and discourse: Evidence from the N400.Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience,11, 657–671. doi:10.1162/ 089892999563724
Wang, S., Chen, H.-C., Yang, J., &Mo, L. (2008). Immediacy of integration in discourse comprehension: Evidence from Chinese readers’ eye movements.Language & Cognitive Processes,23, 241–257. doi:10.1080/01690960701437061
Wang, S., Zhu, Z., Wang, Z., Zhang, J. X., Xiao, Z., Xiang, H., &Chen, H.-C. (2008). Broca’s area plays a role in syntactic processing during Chinese reading comprehension.Neuropsychologia,46, 1371–1378. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.12.020
Wong, K. F. E., &Chen, H.-C. (1999). Orthographic and phonological processing in reading Chinese.Language & Cognitive Processes,14, 461–480. doi:10.1080/016909699386158
Yan, M., Richter, E., Shu, H., &Kliegl, R. (2009). Readers of Chinese extract semantic information from parafoveal words.Psychonomic Bulletin & Review,16, 561–566. doi:10.3758/PBR.16.3.561
Yang, J., Wang, S., Xu, Y., &Rayner, K. (2009). Do Chinese readers obtain preview benefit from character n+2? Evidence from eye movements.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,35, 1192–1204. doi:10.1037/a0013554
Ye, Z., Luo, Y.-J., Friederici, A. D., &Zhou, X. (2006). Semantic and syntactic processing in Chinese sentence comprehension: Evidence from event-related potentials.Brain Research,1071, 186–196. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2005.11.085
Yen, M.-H., Tsai, J.-L., Tzeng, O. J. I., &Hung, D. L. (2008). Eye movements and parafoveal word processing in reading Chinese.Memory & Cognition,36, 1033–1045. doi:10.3758/MC.36.5.1033
Yu, J., &Zhang, Y. (2008). When Chinese semantics meets failed syntax.NeuroReport,19, 745–749. doi:10.1097/WNR.0b013e3282fda21d
Zhang, L. (1997a). Issue on semantic categories.Hanyu Xuexi [Chinese Language Learning],100, 8–13.
Zhang, L. (1997b). What is parataxis?Hanyu Xuexi [Chinese Language Learning],97, 58–61.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This research was based on the first author’s master’s thesis at the South China Normal University under the guidance of the second author. Preparation of the article was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (30670700), the Guangdong Natural Science Foundation, China (06200524), and the Program for New Century Excellent Talent in Universities in China (NCET-08-0645) to the second author, by Grant CUHK441008 from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China, to the third author, and by Grant HD26765 from the National Institutes of Health to the fourth author.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Yang, J., Wang, S., Chen, HC. et al. The time course of semantic and syntactic processing in Chinese sentence comprehension: Evidence from eye movements. Memory & Cognition 37, 1164–1176 (2009). https://doi.org/10.3758/MC.37.8.1164
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/MC.37.8.1164
Keywords
- Reading Time
- Violation Effect
- Word Category
- Syntactic Processing
- Experimental Sentence