晚期汉-英二语者英语被动句句法加工的ERP研究*

选取二语中等熟练者和高熟练者两类中国大学生被试,共40人(27女,13男),年龄为20~29岁,平均年龄23.88岁。采用ERP技术,以直译型英语被动句和意译型英语被动句作为实验材料,通过比较无违例、―句法违例句1‖(动词过去分词形式错误)、―句法违例句2‖(动词过去分词错误用为动词原形而造成的句法违例)以及―句法违例句3‖(动词过去分词误用为动词现在分词形式)条件下的行为数据和ERP多维数据变化的基础上,探讨了二语熟练度和语言间句法结构相似性对汉-英双语者英语被动句句法加工过程的影响。结果表明：高熟练者的反应时和正确率整体上优于中等熟练者;难易度不同的句法错误信息会直接影响被动句的加工,对明显有错误的句法信息的反应速度最快,―正确的局部句法信息‖反应时最长。对明显有错误的句法信息的正确反应率最高,最根本的句法结构的错误信息最低。最根本的句法结构的错误信息引发的P600最大,无违例条件引发的P600最小;高熟练者对最根本的句法结构的错误信息引发最大的P600效应,中等熟练者的P600效应未受不同句法错误信息的影响。行为指标支持句法加工相似性效应——直译句反应快、正确率高;意译句反应慢、正确率低。并且此效应在中等熟练者身上表现更加明显。但是脑神经活动模式未表现出句法结构相似性效应,说明二语熟练度在英语被动句加工中具有更为显著的作用。     

Subject-Verb Agreement in Children and Adults: Serial or Hierarchical Processing?

Two processes, serial and hierarchical, are generally opposed to account for grammatical encoding in language production. In a developmental perspective, the question addressed here is whether the subject-verb agreement during writing is computed serially, once the words are linearly ordered in the sentence, or hierarchically, as soon as the number features are determined in a hierarchical frame. Adults and children from 3rd to 5th grades were requested to listen to sentences with built-in prepositional phrases or relative clauses and to transcribe them as quickly as possible. A serial hypothesis assumes that subject-verb agreement errors should be equally frequent with both preambles because each has the same length separating the subject head noun and the main verb. Conversely, according to a hierarchical view, errors should be more frequent with a prepositional phrase because the syntactic distance between the subject and the verb is greater than with a relative clause. The results revealed a main effect of the preamble manipulated in 5th graders and adults, but not in 3rd graders. These data were in favor of a hierarchical processing in older writers and a serial one in younger children. However, in 3rd grade, we assumed that the potential serial account was a result of the resource constraint on writing more than of a real serial processing of the agreement.     

Memory-load interference in syntactic processing

Participants remembered a short set of words while reading syntactically complex sentences (object–extracted clefts) and syntactically simpler sentences (subject–extracted clefts) in a memory–load study. The study also manipulated whether the words in the set and the words in the sentence were of matched or unmatched types (common nouns vs. proper names). Performance in sentence comprehension was worse for complex sentences than for simpler sentences, and this effect was greater when the type of words in the memory load matched the type of words in the sentence. These results indicate that syntactic processing is not modular, instead suggesting that it relies on working memory resources that are used for other nonsyntactic processes. Further, the results indicate that similarity–based interference is an important constraint on information processing that can be overcome to some degree during language comprehension by using the coherence of language to construct integrated representations of meaning.     

汉、英句法结构相似性与第二语言的熟练度对第二语言句法加工的影响

采用事件相关电位（ERP）技术,考察了汉、英句法结构相似性与第二语言（英语）熟练度对第二语言句法加工的影响。实验材料包含与汉语句法结构相似和不同的两种英语句法结构违反的句子。结果发现：与正确句子相比,相似句法违反句在高熟练组被试中,引发正向的ERP波形偏转（150-800ms）,而在低熟练组被试中,只引发了降低的N400（300-550ms）效应;对于不同句法违反句,无论高低熟悉程度的被试,均未出现显著的ERP效应。研究结果表明,第二语言句法与母语的相似性越高,加工起来更容易;第二语言熟练度水平对第二语言句法加工具有一定的促进作用,但受到两种语言句法结构相似性的影响,相似性越高,熟练度的促进作用越大。     

Age, working memory, and on-line syntactic processing in sentence comprehension

One hundred twenty-seven individuals who ranged in age from 18 to 90 years were tested on a reading span test and on measures of on-line and off-line sentence processing efficiency. Older participants had reduced working-memory spans compared with younger participants. The on-line measures were sensitive to local increases in processing load, and the off-line measures were sensitive to the syntactic complexity of the sentences. Older and younger participants showed similar effects of syntactic complexity on the on-line measures. There was some evidence that older participants were more affected than younger participants by syntactic complexity on the off-line measures. The results support the hypothesis that on-line processes involved in recognizing linguistic forms and determining the literal, preferred, discourse-coherent meaning of sentences constitute a domain of language processing that relies on its own processing resource or working-memory system.     

Click location in sentences: A test of the linguistic competence of seven-year-old fluent and disfluent males

Ten fluent and ten disfluent 7-yr-old males were presented simple and complex fully grammatical, anomalous and scrambled sentences. A click (35-msec 1-kHz tone burst) had been superimposed within three positions to the right or left of the major syntactic boundary in each sentence. The subjects heard the sentence, repeated the sentence, and marked on a preprinted version of the sentence where they heard the click. It was expected that children with greater language facility would more probably locate the click veridically. By the same reasoning, less complex syntactic structures should be expected to influence click placement less than more complex utterances. The following results were obtained: (a) the disfluent group gave a greater number of correct responses than the fluent group; (b) more correct responses were observed for simple sentences than for complex sentences for both groups; and (c) fewer correct responses were observed for both simple and complex grammatical sentences than for anomalous and scrambled sentence types.     

Grammaticality sensitivity in children with early focal brain injury and children with specific language impairment

Grammaticality judgments and processing times associated with violation detection were examined in typically developing children, children with focal brain lesions (FL) acquired early in life, and children with specific language impairment (SLI). Grammatical sensitivity in the FL group, while below typically developing children, was above levels seen in children with SLI. Age effects were noted with developmental changes in sensitivity extending into adolescence. Developmental delays in grammatical processing were particularly pronounced for children with SLI, who showed sensitivity levels below those of younger typically developing children. Sensitivity to agreement violations was also protracted in the SLI group providing further evidence of the vulnerability of morphology, a pattern not unlike that seen in adult aphasics. Findings for the FL group provide compelling evidence of neural and behavioral plasticity in children with early unilateral brain injury. Moreover, results from these children underscore how very different compensatory organization may be compared to profiles seen in adult aphasics who have comparable lesions. In contrast, although it was expected that the SLI children would perform below the typically developing children, the disadvantage seen with respect to the FL group suggests that the underlying pathology responsible for SLI may be more pervasive and less plastic than the focal pathology of children with early brain damage.     

Broken agreement

The subjects and verbs of English sentences agree in number. This superficially simple syntactic operation is regularly implemented by speakers, but occasionally derails in sentences such as The cost of the improvements have not yet been estimated. We examined whether the incidence of such errors was related to the presence of subject-like semantic features in the immediate preverbal nouns, in light of current questions about the semantic versus syntactic nature of sentence subjects and the interactivity of language processing. In three experiments, speakers completed sentence fragments designed to elicit erroneous agreement. We varied the number and animacy of the head noun and the immediate preverbal (local) noun, as well as the amount of material separating the head noun from the verb. The plurality of the local noun phrase had a large and reliable effect on the incidence of agreement errors, but neither its animacy nor its length affected their occurrence. The latter findings suggest, respectively, that the semantic features of sentence subjects are of minimal relevance to the syntactic and morphological processes that implement agreement, and that agreement features are specified at a point in processing where the eventual length of sentential constituents has little effect on syntactic planning. Both results follow naturally from explanations of language production that emphasize the segregation of sentence formulation processes into relatively autonomous components.     

Dissociable patterns of brain activity during comprehension of rapid and syntactically complex speech: evidence from fMRI

Sentence comprehension is a complex task that involves both language-specific processing components and general cognitive resources. Comprehension can be made more difficult by increasing the syntactic complexity or the presentation rate of a sentence, but it is unclear whether the same neural mechanism underlies both of these effects. In the current study, we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to monitor neural activity while participants heard sentences containing a subject-relative or object-relative center-embedded clause presented at three different speech rates. Syntactically complex object-relative sentences activated left inferior frontal cortex across presentation rates, whereas sentences presented at a rapid rate recruited frontal brain regions such as anterior cingulate and premotor cortex, regardless of syntactic complexity. These results suggest that dissociable components of a large-scale neural network support the processing of syntactic complexity and speech presented at a rapid rate during auditory sentence processing.     

The effects of slowed speech on auditory comprehension in aphasia

The present study investigates the effects of slowed speech on auditory comprehension in aphasia. Specifically, an attempt was made to isolate the effects of added time on comprehension at the language processing stages of auditory perception, by increasing the duration of the vowel segments in each word; word recognition and semantic analysis, by adding silences between words; and syntactic analysis, by adding silences at constituent phrase boundaries. Sentences were also read at a slow rate to see the effects of naturally slowed speech on sentence comprehension. Test sentences consisted of simple active and passive declarative sentences, and complex sentences with embedded medial and final relative clauses. Sentences were either semantically reversible or nonreversible. Thirty-four aphasic patients who varied in both severity and type of aphasia were tested on a picture verification task. Results indicated that slowing facilitated language comprehension significantly only in the syntactic condition. Neither syntactic complexity nor semantic reversibility interacted with slowed speech to facilitate auditory language comprehension. Further, it was only the Wernicke's aphasics who showed significant improvement with time added at constituent boundaries. These results suggest that time alone does not facilitate language comprehension in aphasia, but that rather it is the interaction of time with syntactic processing which improves comprehension.     

Syntactic comprehension deficits in Alzheimer's disease

Syntactic comprehension of German patients with dementia of the Alzheimer type was investigated and compared to healthy controls matched with respect to age, sex, and education. Special attention was directed at syntactic structures, which, in contrast to a language like English, are feasible in a grammatically rich language like German. In a sentence picture matching paradigm, only semantically reversible sentences were used. Syntactic complexity ranged from simple active voice sentences to more complex sentences like center-embedded object relative sentences. In comparison to their controls, patients showed a deficit in nearly all categories. Their performance was not influenced by age, but was heavily influenced by the degree of cognitive impairment. Patients with mild cognitive impairment, as defined by a MMSE score of 20 or higher, showed only slight difficulties in syntactic processing, whereas patients with moderate to severe impairment (MMSE < 20) did not perform above chance limits in most syntactic categories. It appears as though syntactic comprehension is only mildly affected in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease and is rather severely impaired in more advanced stages. In the present report, results are discussed in terms of working memory demands for syntactic processing.     

Language and age effects in children's processing of word order

We compare the processing of transitive sentences in young learners of a strict word order language (English) and two languages that allow noun omissions and many variant word orders: Turkish, a case-marked language, and Mandarin Chinese, a non case-marked language. Children aged 1–3 years listened to simple transitive sentences in the typical word order of their language, paired with two visual scenes, only one of which matched the sentence. Multiple measures of comprehension (percent of looking to match, latency to look to match, number of switches of attention) revealed a general pattern of early sensitivity to word order, coupled with language and age effects in children's processing efficiency. In particular, English learners showed temporally speedier processing of transitive sentences than Turkish learners, who also displayed more uncertainty about the matching scene. Mandarin learners behaved like Turkish learners in showing slower processing of sentences, and all language groups displayed faster processing by older than younger children. These results demonstrate that sentence processing is sensitive to crosslinguistic features beginning early in language development.     

Differences in the perception and time course of syntactic and semantic violations

A reading time and an ERP experiment conducted in Italian investigated the parser's responses to a syntactic violation (subject-verb number agreement) and to a semantic violation (subject-verb selectional restriction), examining the time course of comprehension processes until sentence end. The reading-time data showed that the syntactic violation was detected earlier than the semantic one and that the two violations differed in the time-course. The ERP data fully supported the reading time data: Syntactic anomalies elicited a left anterior negativity (LAN) and a P600. Semantic anomalies elicited a N400 centred on the parietal sites which started 90 ms later (latency 430 ms) than the LAN. Furthermore, the N400 evoked by the words that followed the target word continued and increased until sentence end. The results are discussed with respect to the hypotheses that the parser constructs distinct syntactic and semantic analyses of a sentence and that this characteristic holds cross-linguistically. The appropriateness of different methodologies to the study of sentence processing is also evaluated.     

语义信息复杂度对二语者英语被动句加工的影响

采用英语所独有且非常重要的句法结构——被动语态作为语言材料,选取某些可以在句子中的词汇顺序基本没有变化的情况下转换为汉语句式（汉语“被”字句）的“直译型”被动句以及必须根据其意义进行句式转换方能形成相应的汉语句式（汉语主动句）的“意译型”被动句作为实验材料,探讨了在动词语义复杂条件下二语熟练度（包括晚期中等熟练者和高熟练者）对被动句加工过程的影响。结果表明：高熟练者正确率均高于中等熟练者,说明在动词语义复杂的情况下熟练度依然可以预测英语被动句实时加工的程度和水平。此时,语义违例的正确率最高、反应时最短,句法违例句则与之相反。双违例引发的N400效应显著,正确句和句法违例均未引发负向的N400;高熟练者P600的波幅明显高于中等熟练者,句法违例和双违例引发的P600效应最显著。行为指标支持语言间句法加工相似性效应——直译句反应快、正确率高。ERP数据则得出了与之相反的结果：直译句比意译句诱发出更大的N400效应,意译句则引发了较大的P600。上述结果进一步说明二语熟练度对语言间句法加工相似性效应具有很强的调节作用。     

On-line syntactic processing in aphasia: studies with auditory moving window presentation

Twenty-eight aphasic patients with left hemisphere strokes and matched control subjects were tested on an auditory moving windows task in which successive phrases of a sentence were presented in response to subjects' self-paced button presses and subjects made timed judgments regarding the plausibility of each sentence. Pairs of sentences were presented that differed in syntactic complexity. Patients made more errors and/or took longer in making the plausibility judgments than controls, and were more affected than controls by the syntactic complexity of a sentence in these judgments. Normal subjects showed effects of syntactic structure in self-paced listening. On-line syntactic effects differed in patients as a function of their comprehension level. High-performing patients showed the same effects as normal control subjects; low performing patients did not show the same effects of syntactic structure. On-line syntactic effects also differed in patients as a function of their clinical diagnosis. Broca's aphasic patients' on-line performances suggested that they were not processing complex syntactic structures on-line, while fluent aphasics' performances suggested that their comprehension impairment occurred after on-line processing was accomplished. The results indicate that many aphasic patients retain their ability to process syntactic structure on-line, and that different groups of patients with syntactic comprehension disorders show different patterns of on-line syntactic processing.     

N400 and P600 or the Role of the ERP Correlates in Sentence Comprehension: Some Applications to the Italian Language

In the present study, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were applied to the study of language comprehension in the Italian language. The ERPs were recorded from 10 electrodes while the participants read (Experiment 1) or listened (Experiment 2) to sentences containing semantic or syntactic anomalies. Final words that were inconsistent with the sentence context elicited a negative wave at about 400 ms poststimulus that was more concentrated in the posterior sites of the scalp, whereas final words that were incongruous with the grammatical structure (subject-verb nonagreement) elicited a positive wave at about 600 ms poststimulus that was homogeneously distributed on the scalp. The authors found no differences based on the perceptual modality of the stimulus (visual or auditory), nor did they find different ERP correlates as a function of task relevance (explicit-implicit task induction). The available evidence indicated that the ERP response to semantic anomalies was at least partially distinct from the ERP response to syntactic anomalies, and that a syntactic parser is a plausible process included in sentence comprehension. The two semantic and syntactic effects appear as automatic processes of the decoding of the anomalies and also modality-independent processes. Cross-linguistic applications are considered in the general discussion.     

N400 and P600 or the role of the ERP correlates in sentence comprehension: some applications to the Italian language

In the present study, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were applied to the study of language comprehension in the Italian language. The ERPs were recorded from 10 electrodes while the participants read (Experiment 1) or listened (Experiment 2) to sentences containing semantic or syntactic anomalies. Final words that were inconsistent with the sentence context elicited a negative wave at about 400 ms poststimulus that was more concentrated in the posterior sites of the scalp, whereas final words that were incongruous with the grammatical structure (subject-verb nonagreement) elicited a positive wave at about 600 ms poststimulus that was homogeneously distributed on the scalp. The authors found no differences based on the perceptual modality of the stimulus (visual or auditory), nor did they find different ERP correlates as a function of task relevance (explicit-implicit task induction). The available evidence indicated that the ERP response to semantic anomalies was at least partially distinct from the ERP response to syntactic anomalies, and that a syntactic parser is a plausible process included in sentence comprehension. The two semantic and syntactic effects appear as automatic processes of the decoding of the anomalies and also modality-independent processes. Cross-linguistic applications are considered in the general discussion.     

句法歧义消解影响因素、认知机制及其神经基础

句法歧义消解主要是指人们在面临多种句法分析可能性的情况下,句法分析器抑制不正确的句法分析而选择正确句法分析的认知过程。研究表明,该过程受到工作记忆、认知控制能力、语言分布频率、语境、韵律等因素的影响。为有效说明人们是如何完成句法歧义消解的,研究者们建构了诸如花园路径模型、约束满意理论、弱交互作用句法分析理论等相关模型。另外,基于脑成像技术研究表明,左侧额下回、左侧颞叶后部、中部和前部在句法消歧任务中都有显著激活。未来研究当围绕着句法消歧中的语义效应、句法和词汇歧义消解机制的异同、句法消歧中抑制能力的效应等方面展开。     

Syntactic awareness and verbal performance from preschool to fifth grade

Children from preschool to fifth grade were given two independent series of language tasks. The first tested aural sentence memory and was designed to assess children's ability to exploit syntactic structure and semantic cohesion to facilitate sentence recall. The second tested children's syntactic awareness, as reflected in their ability to correct grammatically deviant sentences. Results showed increases with grade level both in children's syntactic awareness and in their use of linguistic structure in sentence recall. Further, syntactic awareness increased with age, independently of vocabulary age. Syntactic awareness was significantly related both to reading achievement and to the use of syntactic structure and semantic structure to facilitate sentence recall, even with the effects of vocabulary age and grade statistically controlled. Although strongly correlated with verbal ability, syntactic awareness appears to constitute a higher-order language skill that is associated with other aspects of verbal performance.This research was carried out at the University of Melbourne and was supported by a University of Melbourne Research Development Grant.     

Parent-rated socio-emotional development in children with language impairment in comparison with typically developed children

Children with language impairment (LI) and children with typical development (TD) were assessed by their respective parents using The MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (Swedish version SECDI) and Greenspan Socio Emotional Growth Chart (GSEGC). The aim was to investigate socio-emotional and language development in children with LI and TD with respect to possible differential patterns and relations between the groups. The results highlight a clear association between language and socio-emotional development. Children with LI were rated similar to young language-matched children with TD, but significantly lower relative to age-matched TD children, particularly concerning symbolic stages of development: the use of linguistic symbols as well as related areas such as symbol play and symbolic mental ability. The results are discussed in light of presumable background factors and possible consequences for children or sub-groups of children with LI.