東華大學圖書館 |

The Processing of Aspectual Verbs in Mandarin Chinese.

紀錄類型:	書目-電子資源 : Monograph/item
正題名/作者:	The Processing of Aspectual Verbs in Mandarin Chinese./
作者:	Ma, Ye.
出版者:	Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, : 2023,
面頁冊數:	196 p.
附註:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 85-02, Section: B.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International85-02B.
標題:	Linguistics. -
電子資源:	https://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=30633550
ISBN:	9798380119009

The Processing of Aspectual Verbs in Mandarin Chinese.
Ma, Ye.

The Processing of Aspectual Verbs in Mandarin Chinese. - Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2023 - 196 p.

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 85-02, Section: B.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Michigan State University, 2023.

This item must not be sold to any third party vendors.

Research in the past few years has investigated the processing costs for sentences such as John began/enjoyed the book. Much of this work has conflated sentences with aspectual verbs, like start or finish, with psychological verbs, like enjoy or tolerate. However, some studies have reported greater costs for aspectual verbs compared to psychological verbs (e.g., Katsika et al., 2012; Lai et al., 2017), which led to a processing model of aspectual verbs in English, i.e., the Structured Individual Hypothesis (SIH). SIH proposes that aspectual verbs lexically encode a function whose value (dimension) must be resolved. This ambiguity resolution is hypothesized to occur at the verb's complement, where a specific dimension is selected based on context (Pinango & Deo, 2016). Recent research (Lai et al., 2017; Lai, Braze, & Pinango, 2023) has examined SIH, however, mixed effects at aspectual verbs were found in English and they did not explicitly argue for a processing effect at the verb itself. In light of the critical role of the context in SIH, recent research (Lai and Pinango, 2023; Lai, Braze, & Pinango, 2023) has investigated how the interpretations of sentences with aspectual verbs were affected by biased contexts in an offline sentence acceptability judgment study and an online eye-tracking study. However, results of the two studies showed that biased contexts disambiguated the interpretations of aspectual verb expressions offline while processing costs in biased contexts were not found to attenuate costs in real time. It is not clear yet why conflicting results were found.This dissertation reports two studies on the processing of aspectual verbs in Mandarin. The first eye-tracking study investigated the costs of processing aspectual verbs and psychological verb in Mandarin Chinese. The results revealed greater costs both for aspectual verbs compared to controls and for aspectual verbs compared to psych verbs, reinforcing the claims of the SIH cross-linguistically (Pinango & Deo, 2016). Strikingly, there was an early{A0}effect at the verb for aspectual verbs but not for psychological verbs. We argue that this result, together with previous findings and other conceptual issues, necessitates a conservative modification of the SIH: aspectual verbs are semantically more complex than pschychological verbs. This modification retains the core analysis underlying the SIH, but reconciles the SIH with experimental findings by bringing it in line with the view that lexical semantic complexity has immediate consequences in processing (e.g., Brennan & Pylkkanen, 2010).{A0}The second study investigated context effects in the processing of aspectual verbs in Mandarin. The reason why conflicting results were found offline versus online in early studies and the time course of context effects remain unclear, but in the view of this dissertation, it may be due to pragmatic contexts, i.e., descriptions of the utterance context. We used grammatical contexts - two classes of adverbs - in two offline interpretation tasks and a self-paced reading experiment to examine context effects for sentences with aspectual verbs in Mandarin. We found that biased grammatical contexts not only affected the interpretations in the offline tasks, but crucially facilitated processing in the online experiment as well. We conclude that biased grammatical contexts can predetermine the interpretations of aspectual verb expressions immediately in real time.In sum, this dissertation shows that the semantic complexity as found in aspectual verbs in Mandarin can be processed immediately when it is encountered, and the contextual facilitation of the processing of semantically complex expressions can occur in real time.

ISBN: 9798380119009Subjects--Topical Terms:

524476
Linguistics.
Subjects--Index Terms:

Aspectual verb

The Processing of Aspectual Verbs in Mandarin Chinese.
LDR:04978nmm a2200409 4500 001 2394153
005 20240416125338.5
006 m o d
007 cr#unu||||||||
008 251215s2023 ||||||||||||||||| ||eng d
020 $a 9798380119009
035 $a (MiAaPQ)AAI30633550
035 $a AAI30633550
040 $a MiAaPQ $c MiAaPQ
100 1 $a Ma, Ye. $0 (orcid)0000-0002-9893-798X $3 3763630
245 1 0 $a The Processing of Aspectual Verbs in Mandarin Chinese.
260 1 $a Ann Arbor : $b ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, $c 2023
300 $a 196 p.
500 $a Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 85-02, Section: B.
500 $a Advisor: Beretta, Alan;Buccola, Brian.
502 $a Thesis (Ph.D.)--Michigan State University, 2023.
506 $a This item must not be sold to any third party vendors.
520 $a Research in the past few years has investigated the processing costs for sentences such as John began/enjoyed the book. Much of this work has conflated sentences with aspectual verbs, like start or finish, with psychological verbs, like enjoy or tolerate. However, some studies have reported greater costs for aspectual verbs compared to psychological verbs (e.g., Katsika et al., 2012; Lai et al., 2017), which led to a processing model of aspectual verbs in English, i.e., the Structured Individual Hypothesis (SIH). SIH proposes that aspectual verbs lexically encode a function whose value (dimension) must be resolved. This ambiguity resolution is hypothesized to occur at the verb's complement, where a specific dimension is selected based on context (Pinango & Deo, 2016). Recent research (Lai et al., 2017; Lai, Braze, & Pinango, 2023) has examined SIH, however, mixed effects at aspectual verbs were found in English and they did not explicitly argue for a processing effect at the verb itself. In light of the critical role of the context in SIH, recent research (Lai and Pinango, 2023; Lai, Braze, & Pinango, 2023) has investigated how the interpretations of sentences with aspectual verbs were affected by biased contexts in an offline sentence acceptability judgment study and an online eye-tracking study. However, results of the two studies showed that biased contexts disambiguated the interpretations of aspectual verb expressions offline while processing costs in biased contexts were not found to attenuate costs in real time. It is not clear yet why conflicting results were found.This dissertation reports two studies on the processing of aspectual verbs in Mandarin. The first eye-tracking study investigated the costs of processing aspectual verbs and psychological verb in Mandarin Chinese. The results revealed greater costs both for aspectual verbs compared to controls and for aspectual verbs compared to psych verbs, reinforcing the claims of the SIH cross-linguistically (Pinango & Deo, 2016). Strikingly, there was an early{A0}effect at the verb for aspectual verbs but not for psychological verbs. We argue that this result, together with previous findings and other conceptual issues, necessitates a conservative modification of the SIH: aspectual verbs are semantically more complex than pschychological verbs. This modification retains the core analysis underlying the SIH, but reconciles the SIH with experimental findings by bringing it in line with the view that lexical semantic complexity has immediate consequences in processing (e.g., Brennan & Pylkkanen, 2010).{A0}The second study investigated context effects in the processing of aspectual verbs in Mandarin. The reason why conflicting results were found offline versus online in early studies and the time course of context effects remain unclear, but in the view of this dissertation, it may be due to pragmatic contexts, i.e., descriptions of the utterance context. We used grammatical contexts - two classes of adverbs - in two offline interpretation tasks and a self-paced reading experiment to examine context effects for sentences with aspectual verbs in Mandarin. We found that biased grammatical contexts not only affected the interpretations in the offline tasks, but crucially facilitated processing in the online experiment as well. We conclude that biased grammatical contexts can predetermine the interpretations of aspectual verb expressions immediately in real time.In sum, this dissertation shows that the semantic complexity as found in aspectual verbs in Mandarin can be processed immediately when it is encountered, and the contextual facilitation of the processing of semantically complex expressions can occur in real time.
590 $a School code: 0128.
650 4 $a Linguistics. $3 524476
650 4 $a Psychology. $3 519075
650 4 $a Language arts. $3 532624
650 4 $a Sociolinguistics. $3 524467
653 $a Aspectual verb
653 $a Context effect
653 $a Language processing
653 $a Real-time processing
653 $a Mandarin Chinese
690 $a 0290
690 $a 0279
690 $a 0621
690 $a 0636
710 2 $a Michigan State University. $b Linguistics - Doctor of Philosophy. $3 3187853
773 0 $t Dissertations Abstracts International $g 85-02B.
790 $a 0128
791 $a Ph.D.
792 $a 2023
793 $a English
856 4 0 $u https://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=30633550