Semantic Processing Persists despite Anomalous Syntactic Category: ERP Evidence from Chinese Passive Sentences

The syntax-first model and the parallel/interactive models make different predictions regarding whether syntactic category processing has a temporal and functional primacy over semantic processing. To further resolve this issue, an event-related potential experiment was conducted on 24 Chinese speakers reading Chinese passive sentences with the passive marker BEI (NP1 + BEI + NP2 + Verb). This construction was selected because it is the most-commonly used Chinese passive and very much resembles German passives, upon which the syntax-first hypothesis was primarily based. We manipulated semantic consistency (consistent vs. inconsistent) and syntactic category (noun vs. verb) of the critical verb, yielding four conditions: CORRECT (correct sentences), SEMANTIC (semantic anomaly), SYNTACTIC (syntactic category anomaly), and COMBINED (combined anomalies). Results showed both N400 and P600 effects for sentences with semantic anomaly, with syntactic category anomaly, or with combined anomalies. Converging with recent findings of Chinese ERP studies on various constructions, our study provides further evidence that syntactic category processing does not precede semantic processing in reading Chinese.Shanghai Municipal Philosophy and Social Sciences Foundation [2010BYY003]; New Century Excellent Talents in University [NCET-12-0907]; Natural Science Foundation of China [30110972, 91232708]; National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) [2010CB833904]SCI(E)PubMedSSCIARTICLEfywu@shisu.edu.cn; xz104@pku.edu.cn6e01319361