The facilitation of constructional meaning in the processing of Mandarin innovative Bei construction
1Institute of Linguistics, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China.
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Summary
Processing Mandarin innovative Bei constructions is faster when primed with their negative meaning. This suggests constructional meaning facilitates understanding of these unique grammatical structures.
Area of Science:
- Linguistics
- Psycholinguistics
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Mandarin innovative Bei constructions (Bei + X) differ from traditional ones by activating an intrinsic negative constructional meaning.
- Understanding the cognitive mechanisms behind processing these emergent meanings is crucial for linguistic theory.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if processing Mandarin innovative Bei constructions is facilitated by accessing emergent negative associations.
- To provide psychological evidence for construction-based processing of these innovative linguistic forms.
Main Methods:
- A self-paced reading experiment employing a priming paradigm.
- Participants were primed with construction-related, component-related, or unrelated phrases before reading sentences with innovative Bei constructions.
Main Results:
- Lexical primes conveying the negative constructional meaning of innovative Bei constructions significantly reduced reading time.
- This effect was observed in comparison to priming with component-related or unrelated phrases.
Conclusions:
- Processing of Mandarin innovative Bei constructions is facilitated by priming their inherent constructional meaning.
- Findings support a construction-based account for the psycholinguistic processing of these Mandarin grammatical structures.