1. Contact e-mail: rdong@udel.edu Discussion and Conclusion
Island Constraint and Reanalysis in Processing Mandarin Topic Structure: An ERP Study
Zhiyin Renee Dong, Ryan Rhodes & Arild Hestvik (University of Delaware)
Contact
Aim of the Study
Results
Question: Are Mandarin topic constructions movement-derived and form filler-gap dependencies, or are they base-generated (Huang, Li & Li, 2009)?
Experiment: We use ERPs to test whether island constraints, a diagnostic for movement (e.g., Chomsky, 1986) modulate filled-gap effects during processing of the “Gap Type” topic construction (e.g., Huang, Li & Li, 2009). Using the paradigm of Traxler and Pickering (1996), experimental sentences similar to the following were visually presented at a fixed rate (300ms duration, 200ms ISI).
Every stimulus sentence was preceded by a context sentence1:
The newly arrived editor of the school newsletter is doing paperwork at the Human Resource Department, and a teacher came by to deliver a document.
At verb: No N400 was observed at the verb in the non-island conditions. Instead, an anterior negativity was observed as a main effect of ISLAND.
At NP: A main effect P600 was observed at the post-verbal NP.
Anterior negativity at verb:
P600 at post-verbal NP:
Island
Non-Island
Na ge laoshi, renshi chu DE Xiaozhang SUO zhaohu DE bianji hui qu zhao.
400ms
600ms
Non-island Conditions: Plausible A. Na ge
laoshi,
renshi
chu DE
Xiaozhang
Zhaohu le
bianji
hui qu
zhao.
That CL
teacher, HR
Dept ’s
Zhang
greet
ASP
editor
will go
find.
‘That teacher, after Zhang from the HR Department greeted the editor, (he, Zhang) will go and find (that teacher)’.
Non-island Conditions: Implausible B.
wenjian,
zhaohu
file
find
‘That file, after Zhang from the HR Department greeted the editor, (he, Zhang) will go and find (that file)’. *
Island Conditions: Plausible C. Na ge
laoshi,
renshi
chu DE
Xiaozhang
SUO
zhaohu
bianji
hui qu
zhao.
That CL
teacher, HR
Dept ’s
Zhang
greet
DE2
editor
will go
find.
‘That teacher, the editor whom Zhang from the HR Department greeted will go and find(that teacher)’. 
Island Conditions: Implausible D.
wenjian,
file,
find
‘That file, the editor whom Zhang from the HR Department greeted will go and find (that file)’. 
N170 * *
1topic in these type of Chinese topic constructions are typically known topic previously introduced in the discourse (e.g., Huang, Li & Li, 2009).
2Relative clause (RC) marker. Chinese RCs are head-final and the parser won’t recognized it until SUO (Hsu, 2008)
Mean voltages were computed for the anterior and posterior regions of interest in 100ms time bins, and entered in an ANOVA with TIME, ISLANDHOOD, and PLAUSIBILITY as independendent variables.
Anterior Negativity: a significant main effect of ISLAND (F=4.87; p=.04), no interaction with plausibility. Planned orthogonal contrast in each successive 100ms time windows showed this effect was driven by a significant contrast in the ms time window (p<.02).
P600: a significant main effect of ISLAND (F=4.56; p<.05); no interaction with plausibility. Planned orthogonal contrast showed significant differences in the ms (p=.02), ms (p<.04), and ms (p=.02) time windows.
Anterior Negativity:
Island vs Non-island
Predictions
N400 at the critical verb (offset) in non-island conditions A & B:
An “active gap filling” strategy initiates a search for a verb and potential gap site. In non-island sentences A & B, this will create a semantic mismatch for “file” at the first verb “greet”, compared to “teacher” N400 is predicted.
Controls: Conditions C & D contain a complex NP island (a relative clause), indicated by the particle SUO (Hsu, 2008). Gap-filling is blocked within islands, hence the verb here serves as control for the corresponding verb in non-islands for computing an N400.
ELAN/LAN/P600 complex at actual object NP:
After the topic is temporarily linked with the verb in A & B, the actual object NP “editor” is unexpected. We predict an (e)LAN, indicative of syntactic category expectation violation (Hestvik et al 2007). Next, the parser must reanalyze, which should be reflected in a P600 (Friederici, 2002). The “editor” in C & D serve as control.
P600:
Island vs Non-island
Grammaticality judgments and comprehension questions: the subjects are largely accurate in online comprehension (73.5%, SD=10%) and was able to judge grammaticality in off-line tasks correctly (F (1,19)=162.98, p<0.01), suggesting tacit knowledge of island constraints
Discussion and Conclusion
Method
Take-home message: The ERP data supports movement analysis and gap-filling!
We interpret the anterior negativity at the verb in non-island conditions to indicate increased resource use at the critical verb (e.g., Muller, King and Kutas, 1997) due to gap-filling.
We speculate that lack of N400 at the verb is due to the fact that the topic and the NPs are initially presented in the context sentence, and subsequently in the experimental sentences. This can cause repetition priming which in turn reduces the amplitude of N400 (e.g., Van Petten et al, 1991).
The P600 at the actual object NP in non-island conditions suggests that the parser is surprised to encounter the NP, after initially linking the fronted topic NP to a gap after the verb “greet “. The P600 indicates subsequent reanalysis, caused by revision of the gap site to the correct position (after “find“).
Participants: 20 native speakers of Chinese (Age M=23). 3 were excluded due to too many bad channels after artifact correction.
Materials: 128 sentences were distributed in four test conditions (32 each), with 128 filler sentences.
ERP session was conducted first, followed by a Paper-and-Pencil grammaticality judgement task. The subjects rated the acceptability of 20 sentences that either observed or violated the island constraint.
EEG was recorded with 128 electrodes; segmented into 800ms epochs with 200ms baseline, time locked at the critical verb (e.g. greet), and the onset of the following NP. Bad channels were replaced, eye blinks were removed and eye movement artifacts were corrected using EP toolkit (Dien,2010). The data were average referenced.
Dependent measures: Electrode regions were determined by visual inspection. Single average per subject and cell was entered in repeated measures ANOVA with the independent variables ISLAND and PLAUSIBILITY; followed by orthogonal contrast analyses to test specific predictions.
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