ERIC Number: EJ970275
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2012-May
Pages: 17
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0749-596X
EISSN: N/A
Mapping Concepts to Syntax: Evidence from Structural Priming in Mandarin Chinese
Cai, Zhenguang G.; Pickering, Martin J.; Branigan, Holly P.
Journal of Memory and Language, v66 n4 p833-849 May 2012
Theories of how people construct linguistic form during production are largely based on English and closely related languages. We report three experiments that used a structural priming paradigm to investigate grammatical encoding in Mandarin Chinese, in particular the way conceptual information is mapped onto grammatical structure. The results show that, in addition to persisting in using the same syntactic form across utterances, speakers of Mandarin persisted in their mappings from conceptual elements to syntactic elements, including both grammatical functions and linear surface word order positions. The results thus argue against a two-stage model where conceptual representations are first mapped onto grammatical functions, which are then in turn mapped onto surface linear positions. Instead, the results support a one-stage model where the processor computes in a single stage a structure that specifies both the linear order and the grammatical functions of its constituents. (Contains 8 tables and 3 figures.)
Descriptors: Priming, Concept Mapping, Syntax, Mandarin Chinese, Language Research, Linguistic Theory, Grammar, Models, Language Processing
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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Authoring Institution: N/A
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