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Dissociating Semantic and Number-Related Processing in Mandarin Quantity Phrase Production: Behavioral Validation and ERP Evidence
Poster Session A, Wednesday, September 30, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm, Wangari Maathai
Ziheng Cheng1, Jenny Doetjes1, Niels Schiller1,2; 1Leiden University, 2City University of Hong Kong
In speech production, speakers must encode conceptual-semantic information as well as lexico-syntactic features. However, it remains unclear whether number information is automatically selected during phrase production in languages without obligatory nominal number marking. Mandarin Chinese provides a useful test case, because numerosity is expressed through numeral–classifier–noun phrases, such as yi ge pingguo “one apple” and san ge pingguo “three apples”, rather than through plural morphology. We examined semantic and number-related processing in Mandarin quantity phrase production using a behavioral validation experiment and an ERP picture-word interference experiment. In the behavioral validation experiment, 20 native Mandarin speakers named displays containing either one or three identical objects. Thirty black-and-white line drawings were used as target pictures. Each picture appeared with four distractor types: semantically related bare nouns, semantically unrelated bare nouns, adverbs, and symbol strings. Each participant completed 240 trials. This experiment was used to evaluate the stimulus set and distractor materials for the main ERP study. In the ERP experiment, 29 native Mandarin speakers named pictures as quantity phrases while ignoring visually presented distractors. Target displays contained either one or three identical objects, eliciting responses such as “one classifier noun” or “three classifier noun”. Distractors varied in semantic relatedness and number congruency, allowing us to test whether semantic information and number-related information modulate naming latencies and event-related potentials during phrase production. Behaviorally, the ERP experiment showed robust semantic interference: naming latencies were slower with semantically related than unrelated distractors. In contrast, number congruency did not reliably affect naming latencies. Phrases referring to three objects were produced faster than phrases referring to one object, but this effect did not interact with semantic relatedness or number congruency. ERP analyses revealed an N400-like semantic effect, with more negative-going waveforms for semantically unrelated than related distractors. No reliable ERP modulation by number congruency was observed. These findings suggest a dissociation between semantic processing and number-related lexico-syntactic processing in Mandarin quantity phrase production. Semantic information robustly modulated both behavioral and neural indices, whereas number congruency did not produce reliable behavioral or ERP effects under the present task conditions. The results support cross-linguistic models in which number encoding during speech production depends on how number is grammatically expressed in a given language.
Topic Areas: Language Production,