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Title:
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Factors Affecting Relative Clause Processing in Mandarin
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Author:
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Fuyun Wu
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Email:
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click here to access email
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Degree Awarded:
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University of Southern California
, Chinese Linguistics Collection
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Degree Date:
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2009
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Linguistic Subfield(s):
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Psycholinguistics
Text/Corpus Linguistics
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Subject Language(s):
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Chinese, Mandarin
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Director(s):
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Andrew Simpson
Audrey Li
Bosco Tjan
Elsi Kaiser
Elaine Andersen
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Abstract:
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Current models of sentence processing make contrasting predictions
regarding the processing of head-final relative clauses (RCs) in Chinese,
but existing research has found mixed results. It is not yet clear (i)
whether subject-extracted RCs are easier to process than object-extracted
RCs; and (ii) whether classifiers in a dislocated position before the RC
can facilitate processing. This dissertation investigates how extraction
site, animacy configuration, and classifier positioning guide real-time
parsing of Chinese RCs. Assuming a correlation between frequency of
occurrence and ease of processing, I analyzed the frequency pattern of
these factors in the Chinese Treebank 5.0 corpus, then formulated and
experimentally tested hypotheses to account for the patterns observed.
Chapter 1 and 2 introduce the issues and review the relevant literature.
Chapter 3 presents a corpus analysis, focusing on extraction type
(subject-extracted vs. object-extracted) and animacy of the head and
embedded nouns. The results show that subject-extracted RCs are more
frequent than object-extracted RCs and suggest three Animacy Preference
Constraints (APCs): (i) head nouns that are RC subjects tend to be animate;
(ii) head nouns that are RC objects tend to be inanimate; (iii) in both
cases, the animacy of the head and embedded nouns tend to contrast.
Chapter 4 presents three self-paced reading experiments to test whether the
hypothesized APCs influence ease of RC parsing. The results show that
animacy configurations modulate the processing load induced by Chinese RCs:
subject-extracted RCs are easier to process than object-extracted RCs when
the animacy configuration is inversely contrastive (i.e., RC subject =
inanimate, RC object = animate).
Chapter 5 focuses on classifiers as possible cues for upcoming RCs. The
corpus reveals an asymmetrical pattern of classifier distribution in
subject-extracted and object-extracted RCs. I propose two processing
principles related to anticipatory processing and lexical access. These
principles are supported by one eye-tracking and two reading-time
experiments. Results suggest that pre-RC classifiers help the human parsing
system identify head-final RC structures efficiently.
I consider the findings in light of four major theoretical accounts, and
suggest that the parsing of Chinese RCs best fits the probabilistic,
expectation-based constraint-satisfaction model.
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