Ambiguity in the processing of Mandarin Chinese relative clauses: One factor cannot explain it all

Michael P Mansbridge, Katsuo Tamaoka, Kexin Xiong and Rinus G Verdonschot

PLOS ONE, 2017, vol. 12, issue 6, 1-38

Abstract: This study addresses the question of whether native Mandarin Chinese speakers process and comprehend subject-extracted relative clauses (SRC) more readily than object-extracted relative clauses (ORC) in Mandarin Chinese. Presently, this has been a hotly debated issue, with various studies producing contrasting results. Using two eye-tracking experiments with ambiguous and unambiguous RCs, this study shows that both ORCs and SRCs have different processing requirements depending on the locus and time course during reading. The results reveal that ORC reading was possibly facilitated by linear/temporal integration and canonicity. On the other hand, similarity-based interference made ORCs more difficult, and expectation-based processing was more prominent for unambiguous ORCs. Overall, RC processing in Mandarin should not be broken down to a single ORC (dis)advantage, but understood as multiple interdependent factors influencing whether ORCs are either more difficult or easier to parse depending on the task and context at hand.

Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0178369 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 78369&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0178369

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0178369

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().