ERP Evidence for the Activation of Syntactic Structure During Comprehension of Lexical Idiom.
J Psycholinguist Res
; 46(5): 1137-1148, 2017 Oct.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-28364330
ABSTRACT
The present study used event-related potentials to investigate whether the syntactic structure was activated in the comprehension of lexical idioms, and if so, whether it varied as a function of familiarity and semantic transparency. Participants were asked to passively read the "1+2" structural Chinese lexical idioms with each being presented following 3-5 contextual "1+2" (congruent-structure condition) or "2+1" structural Chinese phrases (incongruent-structure condition). The N400 ERP responses showed more positivity in congruent-structure condition relative to incongruent-structure condition in idioms with high familiarity and high semantic transparency, but less positivity in congruent-structure condition in idioms with high familiarity but low semantic transparency, idioms with low familiarity but high semantic transparency, and idioms with low familiarity and low semantic transparency. Our results suggest that syntactic structure, as the unnecessarity of lexical idiomatic words, was nevertheless activated, independent of familiarity and semantic transparency.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Psycholinguistics
/
Semantics
/
Comprehension
/
Evoked Potentials, Visual
Limits:
Adult
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
Language:
En
Journal:
J Psycholinguist Res
Year:
2017
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
China