The facilitation of constructional meaning in the processing of Mandarin innovative Bei construction.

The processing of Mandarin innovative Bei construction in the form of "Bei + X" is different from that of the traditional Bei construction in that the former activates the constructional meaning which is intrinsically negative. This study thus investigates whether the processing of Mandarin innovative Bei construction is facilitated by the access of such emergent negative associations in a self-paced reading experiment with a priming paradigm. In this study, participants firstly read lexical primes in three conditions including construction-related phrases (i.e. phrases expressing the negative constructional meaning of the innovative Bei construction), component-related phrases (i.e. phrases expressing the partial literal meaning of the innovative Bei construction), and unrelated phrases (i.e. phrases expressing unrelated meaning to the innovative Bei construction). They then read sentences where the innovative Bei construction was fitted into and finally answered questions. Results showed that the lexical primes conveying the constructional meaning of the innovative Bei construction significantly shortened participants' reading time duration as compared with another two priming conditions. To conclude, the processing of Mandarin innovative Bei construction is facilitated by the priming of its constructional meaning, which provides some psychological evidence for the construction-based processing of Mandarin innovative Bei construction.

Microbiological characteristics of different tongue coatings in adults.

BACKGROUND: Tongue coating is an important health indicator in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The tongue coating microbiome can distinguish disease patients from healthy controls. To study the relationship between different types of tongue coatings and health, we analyzed the species composition of different types of tongue coatings and the co-occurrence relationships between microorganisms in Chinese adults. From June 2019 to October 2020, 158 adults from Hangzhou and Shaoxing City, Zhejiang Province, were enrolled. We classified the TCM tongue coatings into four different types: thin white tongue fur (TWF), thin yellow tongue fur (TYF), white greasy tongue fur (WGF), and yellow greasy tongue fur (YGF). Tongue coating specimens were collected and used for 16S rRNA gene sequencing using the Illumina MiSeq system. Wilcoxon rank-sum and permutational multivariate analysis of variance tests were used to analyze the data. The microbial networks in the four types of tongue coatings were inferred independently using sparse inverse covariance estimation for ecological association inference. RESULTS: The microbial composition was similar among the different tongue coatings; however, the abundance of microorganisms differed. TWF had a higher abundance of Fusobacterium periodonticum and Neisseria mucosa, the highest α-diversity, and a highly connected community (average degree = 3.59, average closeness centrality = 0.33). TYF had the lowest α-diversity, but the most species in the co-occurrence network diagram (number of nodes = 88). The platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) was associated with tongue coating (P = 0.035), and the YGF and TYF groups had higher PLR values. In the co-occurrence network, Aggregatibacter segnis was the "driver species" of the TWF and TYF groups and correlated with C-reactive protein (P < 0.05). Streptococcus anginosus was the "driver species" in the YGF and TWF groups and was positively correlated with body mass index and weight (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Different tongue coatings have similar microbial compositions but different abundances of certain bacteria. The co-occurrence of microorganisms in the different tongue coatings also varies. The significance of different tongue coatings in TCM theory is consistent with the characteristics and roles of the corresponding tongue-coating microbes. This further supports considering tongue coating as a risk factor for disease.

Processing different types of iconicity in Chinese transferred epithet comprehension: An ERP study.

Transferred epithet can be regarded as a reflection of semantic markedness since the modifier and the modified conflict with each other and lead to semantic deviation; yet the corresponding processing mechanism is less studied. The present study examined the neurocognitive mechanism of Chinese transferred epithet comprehension by employing ERP technique from the perspective of Iconicity of Markedness. Participants were required to read materials with different types of semantic markedness, namely unmarked linguistic expression (literal sentences) and marked linguistic expression (transferred epithets), and then judge whether the targets were words or pseudo-words. In terms of semantic markedness, the targets are words reflecting the unmarked semantic meaning of literal sentences and marked semantic meaning of transferred epithets respectively. The target words after transferred epithets elicited a larger N400 and a smaller LPC than those in literal sentences. These results suggest that processing sentences with marked and unmarked iconicity involve different neural mechanisms, with the former requiring more cognitive efforts to extract the similarity features.

Neural correlates of processing Chinese structural particles: An ERP study.

In order to investigate the neural correlates of processing Chinese structural particles, 'De1 (), De2 (), and De3 ()', we recorded and analyzed the ERPs components related to the conflict processing in the judgement task, in which the participants are required to determine whether the target word matched the structural particle that appear in the given structure. We found that compared with the congruent condition, the frontal-central N400 and central-parietal P600 were elicited by the incongruent target word. Especially, three Chinese structural particles, 'De1 (), De2 (), and De3 ()' modulated the amplitudes of N400 and P600 components and the incongruent condition of 'De1' elicited larger N400 and P600 than did 'De2' and 'De3', but no apparent difference appeared between the latter two structural particles. These data provide new electrophysiological evidence for processing Chinese structural particles.