ERP evidence for the effect of rhythmic patterns on the semantic processing of Chinese trisyllabic NN compounds

Abstract

The collocation of a monosyllable and a disyllable stands as a distinctive prosodic feature of Chinese. Whether rhythm is the decisive factor for acceptability of the collocation is still controversial in Chinese linguistics. This study has investigated this issue by exploring the influence of rhythmic patterns (2 + 1 disyllable + monosyllable vs. 1 + 2 monosyllable + disyllable) on the reading of Chinese noun-noun compounds (NN compounds) through an event-related potential (ERP) experiment. We found that, in terms of behavioral data, rhythmic patterns exerted a distinct meaning-modulating effect, namely, the abnormal rhythmic pattern (1 + 2) tends to reduce the semantic acceptability of NN compounds. ERP data showed that, the normal rhythmic pattern (2 + 1) elicited a larger N100 component than the abnormal one in semantically incongruent conditions; a rhythm-modulated N400 component was followed by a later positive component (LPC) associated with the re-analysis of compounds. Both behavioral and ERP data revealed a greater cognitive effort required to process NN compounds when semantics and rhythm were incongruent. These findings indicate that rhythmic patterns and semantics interactively affect the reading processing of Chinese NN compounds, and that rhythmic expectations may prevail in the semantic processing of Chinese compounds.