Processing English Mono-morphemic Nouns and Verbs for English Learners of Chinese: An ERP Study

doi:10.3969/j.issn.1674-8921.2017.06.007

Abstract

Abstract: The paper investigates the underlying mechanism of English mono-morphemic nouns and verbs for in English learners of Chinese based on the data obtained by ERP technology. It mainly investigates two questions: (1) Do English learners of Chinese share the same underlying mechanism in processing English mono-morphemic nouns and verbs? (2) Does word frequency influence processing English mono-morphemic nouns and verbs? By analyzing and comparing P150, P250 and N400 ERP components elicited by English nouns and verbs respectively, we find that there exist significant main effects of word class in P250 and N400 components, that the interactive effect of word class and frequency is marginally significant in terms of P250, and that the main effect of word frequency is marginally significant in terms of N400. Therefore, it is concluded that English learners of Chinese employ different mechanism to process English mono-morphemic nouns and verbs, and that word frequency has an influence in processing English mono-morphemic nouns and verbs, and that the semantically driven noun-verb disassociation can be found in the process of English mono-morphemic nouns and verbs and it is affected by word frequency.

CLC Number:

H030

CHEN Shifa, ZHU Lihui, WANG Ya, YANG Xin, GU Xiaolan, YANG Lianrui. Processing English Mono-morphemic Nouns and Verbs for English Learners of Chinese: An ERP Study[J]. Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies, 2017, 17(06): 51-56.

References

Chan, A. H. D., K. K. Luke, P. Li, V. Yip, G. Li, B. Weekes & L. H. Tan. 2008. Neural correlates of nouns and verbs in early bilinguals [J]. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1145: 30-40.
Chung, K. K. H., X. H. Tong, P. D. Liu, C. M. Chang & X. Z. Meng. 2010. The processing of morphological structure information in Chinese coordinative compounds: An event-related potential study [J]. Brain Research 1352: 157-166.
Hauk, O. & F. Pulvermuller. 2004. Effects of word length and frequency on the human event-related potential[J]. Clinical Neurophysiology 115(5): 1090-1103.
Hernandez, M., A. Cano, A. Costa, N. Sebastian-Galles, M. Juncadella & J. Gascon-Bayarri. 2008. Grammatical category-specific deficits in bilingual aphasia [J]. Brain & Language 107: 68-80.
Kambanaros,M.& W.V.Steenbrugge. 2006. Noun and verb processing in Greek-English bilingual individuals with anomic aphasia and the effect of instrumentality and verb-noun name relation [J]. Brain and Language 97(2): 162-177.
Kim, M. S., J. J. Kim & J. S. Kwon. 2001. The effect of immediate and delayed word repetition on event-related potential in a continuous recognition task [J]. Cognitive Brain Research 11 (3): 387-396.
Miceli, G., M. C. Silveri & A. Caramazza. 1984. On the basis for the agrammatica's difficulty in producing main verbs [J]. Cortex 20(2): 207-220.
Polich, J. & E. Donchin. 1988. P300 and the word frequency effect [J]. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology 70 (1):33-45.
Szekely, A., S. D'Amico, A. Devescovi, K. Federmeier, D. Herron, G. Iyer et al. 2005. Timed action and object naming [J]. Cortex 41(1): 7-25.
Xia, Q. S., L. Wang & G. Peng. 2016. Nouns and verbs in Chinese are processed differently: Evidence from an ERP study on monosyllabic and disyllabic word processing[J]. Journal of Neurolinguistics 40: 66-78.
Yang, J., L. H. Tan & P. Li. 2011. Lexical representation of nouns and verbs in the late bilingual brain [J].Journal of Neurolinguistics 24(6): 674-682.
陈士法. 2009. 英语复合词在英汉心理词典中存储单位的实验研究[J]. 外语教学与研究(3): 211-216.
陈士法. 2011. 英汉双语心理词典中英语单词存储单位及其影响因素研究[D]. 上海:上海外国语大学.
陈士法、杜玲、刘佳、杨连瑞、吕茂丽. 2016. 中国英语学习者英语二语名动分离的ERP证据[J]. 外语电化教学(2): 10-15,20.
陈士法、苗兴伟、方洁. 2007. 英汉双语心理词典中英语单词的存储单位[J]. 外语教学与研究(1): 51-55.
陈士法、彭建武、侯林平、杨洪娟、房红芳、刘德美. 2010. 英汉心理词典中英语单词存储的词性效应研究[J]. 中国海洋大学学报(社会科学版) (2): 95-100.
陈士法、彭建武、杨洪娟、侯林平、房红芳. 2011. 英汉心理词典中英语单词存储的词长效应研究[J]. 外语教学 (5): 48-51.
李荣宝、彭聃龄、郭桃梅. 2003. 汉英语义通达过程的事件相关电位研究[J]. 心理学报(3): 309-316.
刘涛、杨亦鸣、赵仑、张珊珊、张强. 2007. 应用事件相关电位技术考察正常人名词和动词的脑区分布特征[J]. 中国组织土程研究与临床康复(31): 6187-90.
王春茂、彭聃龄.1999. 合成词加工中的词频、词素频率及语义透明度[J].心理学报(3): 266-273.
杨亦鸣、耿立波. 2008. 基于ERPs实验的二语词汇能力心理现实性研究[J]. 外语教学与研究(3): 163-170.
张辉. 2014. 二语学习者句法加工的ERP研究[J]. 解放军外国语学院学报(1): 88-99.
张钦、丁锦红、郭春彦、工争艳. 2003. 名词与动词加工的ERP差异[J]. 心理学报(6): 753-760.

[1]	YANG Yaping. The Revival of Ordinary Language Philosophy [J]. Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies, 2019, 19(01): 97-105.
[2]	MEI Xuan. Interpreting Moral Assertions from the Perspective of Implicature Theory [J]. Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies, 2017, 17(06): 57-61.
[3]	XIAO Ruolin, WEI Naixing. A Corpus-based Contrastive Study of N that-cl Patterns in Research Articles by Chinese and Western Scholars [J]. Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies, 2017, 17(01): 34-41.
[4]	QU Tao. Interactions in Linguistic and Multimodal Texts: A Case Study of Pride and Prejudice [J]. Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies, 2015, 15(09): 14-19.
[5]	LEI Qian, ZHANG Delu. A Multimodal Stylistic Study on the Two Covers of Graham Rawle’s Woman’s World [J]. Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies, 2015, 15(09): 20-25.
[6]	SHI Chunxu, WANG Zhenhua. The Holistic Appraisal Construction in Multimodal History Textbooks [J]. Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies, 2015, 15(09): 8-13.
[7]	LIU Rui, ZHANG Del. On the Assessment Framework for Chinese College Students’ Multiliteracies in Foreign Languages [J]. Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies, 2015, 15(09): 26-31.
[8]	SHEN Xingchen, CHEN Xinren. A Cognitive Pragmatic Approach to Referential Ambiguity in Advertisements: A Case Study of Car Ads [J]. Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies, 2015, 15(09): 33-38.
[9]	WANG Xueyu. Diachronic Changes of Discourse and Identity Construction: A Historical Sociopragmatic Perspective [J]. Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies, 2015, 15(09): 39-43.
[10]	QIAN Yonghong. Socio-psychological Mechanism Underlying Misleading Vague Language in Advertisements: A Critical Pragmatic Analysis [J]. Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies, 2015, 15(09): 44-48.
[11]	WU Jue, YAO Yayan. Memetic Strategies in Micro-movie Advertisements [J]. Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies, 2015, 15(09): 49-51.
[12]	FAN Zhenqiang. The Contextual Effects and Motivation of Tautology within Neo-cognitive Pragmatics [J]. Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies, 2015, 15(07): 12-16.
[13]	XIE Nini. Review of Reading Visual Narratives [J]. Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies, 2014, 14(09): 74-76.
[14]	WEN Xu. Pragmatics Enterprise: Philosophical, Cultural, and Cognitive Perspectives [J]. Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies, 2014, 14(06): 54-58.
[15]	LIANG Ruiqing. Metaphor: A Phenomenal Perspective [J]. Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies, 2014, 14(06): 77-83.