Structural Priming and Frequency Effects Interact in Chinese Sentence Comprehension.

ABSTRACT: Previous research in several European languages has shown that the language processing system is sensitive to both structural frequency and structural priming effects. However, it is currently not clear whether these two types of effects interact during online sentence comprehension, especially for languages that do not have morphological markings. To explore this issue, the present study investigated the possible interplay between structural priming and frequency effects for sentences containing the Chinese ambiguous construction V NP1 de NP2 in a self-paced reading experiment. The sentences were disambiguated to either the more frequent/preferred NP structure or the less frequent VP structure. Each target sentence was preceded by a prime sentence of three possible types: NP primes, VP pr

SUBMITTER: Wei H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4735403 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature