One Model or Two? Sentence Verification in Children and Adults

We employed the sentence‐picture verification paradigm to ask whether children are more likely than adults to construct unitary representations of ambiguous sentences. Six kinds of sentence were presented with the two kinds of inherently ambiguous sentences being: “There are crosses either above or below the line” and “There are crosses above [below] the line”. These sentences are inherently ambiguous because they afford both ‘inclusive’ and ‘exclusive’ readings, the readings being determined by whether subjects judge a picture with crosses both above and below a line to be true of the sentences. In Experiment 1, which had a sentence‐picture order, and in Experiment 2, which had a picture‐sentence order, the verification reaction‐time and the true/false judgement data together suggested that the younger subjects were more likely to construct unitary representations for the ambiguous sentences. Our strongest evidence for this claim was that children are heavily biased towards an inclusive reading of disjunction. Analysis of the sentence reading times in Experiments 1 and 3 suggested that children, unlike adults, may be deferring the construction of a mental model of the disjunctive sentence until the picture arrives.     

短时副词与句子的语义功能类型分析

文章考察了短时副词在事件句和非事件句,陈述句（肯定、否定）和非陈述句中的分布规律和语法功能,文章提出：短时副词几乎可以用于各种疑问句、祈使句、标题句和从属句中,不能用于惯常句中。由于受到否定句类的句法语义要求和否定词否定“辖域”的制约,短时副词并不能自由地用于否定词是“不”“没（有）”的否定句中,多数情况下短时副词是出现在否定词后面的。     

英语多义句

多义句是指拥有超过一种以上解释的句子。多义句的出现有如下原因：句子中的出现的一个多义词导致整个句子多义：句子中出现了一个多义的惯用语;对于句子中词汇的不同分组理解可造成整个句子多义：对于所有格的不同判定,主格或宾格,是否带有介词“of”;英语成语有时也是一个原因;口语上出现的多义句;英语的否定词;英语的单数及复数形式有时也是一个有趣的原因。大多数时候,当碰到一个多义句,正确理解它的方法是通过上下文来做出准确的判断。     

Time course of elaborative inferences in reading as a function of prior vocabulary knowledge

Elaborative inferences during reading were assessed by means of a naming task and eye-fixation monitoring in low- and high-vocabulary undergraduates. A context sentence was followed by a target word to be named or read. Evidence for inferences involved facilitation in naming latencies or reading times for the target word when this was predictable by the context. The results indicated that high-vocabulary readers were faster and more likely to make inferences on-line than low-vocabulary readers. Those low in vocabulary, generated inferences only after 1050 ms of the end of the inducing context sentence, whereas those high in vocabulary made inferences 500 ms earlier. Furthermore, when the stimuli involved reading of continuous text, rather than discrete naming of target words, only the high-vocabulary readers drew inferences, which suggests that low-vocabulary readers are unlikely to make inferences in natural reading conditions.     

听力理解认知策略分析及教学对策

本在调查的基础上分析了第二语言学习在听力理解过程中的认知策略。由于许多学习只采取“自下而上”的信息处理方式，缺少“自上而下”的信息处理方式的结合，导致了听力理解困难。如何才能做到“自上而下”地处理听力信息，本提出听力训练应重视整句的听辨，并阐述了这一训练方法的科学性和合理性，并在此基础上提出了一些训练方式。     

语用中语义等值修辞形式刍议

作为表达同一语义的不同修辞形式或手段的“语义等值形式”是语言运用中等值原则的具体表现形式.语义等值形式的使用,不仅止于单词的调换及其作为独词句或省略句的形式出现,也包括句子等大一级的语言片段的置换.而在特定的语境中临时构成的语义等值修辞手段更是千变万化、丰富多彩的.“语义等值形式”是我们认识语言运用规律的一个视点,其贯彻于语用中,是为了强化语言单位的表达功能的,具有特殊的修辞功能.     

Hyphens for disambiguating phrases: effectiveness for young and older adults

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether hyphens that disambiguate phrasing in ambiguous sentences influence reading rate and reading comprehension for younger and older adults. Moreover, as working memory (WM) has been implicated in age-related changes in sentence comprehension for both auditory and written materials, we asked if it contributed to comprehension of our sentences with hyphenated and non-hyphenated ambiguous noun phrases (NPs), predicting that the hyphens would reduce WM load. Twenty younger (M?=?24?years) and 20 older (M?=?73?years) adults read sentences with either ambiguous or non-ambiguous NPs that were either hyphenated or not. Both reading times for the sentences and accuracy on Yes/No questions were measured. Results indicated that younger adults read sentences more rapidly than the older participants whether sentences were presented word-by-word or as complete sentences. Both younger and older adults read sentences with ambiguous hyphenated NPs faster than sentences with ambiguous non-hyphenated NPs. Yes/No question accuracy distinguished reading of the sentences with ambiguous hyphenated phrases from those with ambiguous non-hyphenated phrases for older, but not for younger adults. Regression analyses showed that age contributed to both accuracy and reading times on this task, whereas WM did not.     

Usage of statistical cues for word boundary in reading Chinese sentences

The present study examined the use of statistical cues for word boundaries during Chinese reading. Participants were instructed to read sentences for comprehension with their eye movements being recorded. A two-character target word was embedded in each sentence. The contrast between the probabilities of the ending character (C2) of the target word (C12) being used as word beginning and ending in all words containing it was manipulated. In addition, by using the boundary paradigm, parafoveal overlapping ambiguity in the string C123 was manipulated with three types of preview of the character C3, which was a single-character word in the identical condition. During preview, the combination of C23′ was a legal word in the ambiguous condition and was not a word in the control condition. Significant probability and preview effects were observed. In the low-probability condition, inconsistency in the frequent within-word position (word beginning) and the present position (word ending) lengthened gaze durations and increased refixation rate on the target word. Although benefits from the identical previews were apparent, effects of overlapping ambiguity were negligible. The results suggest that the probability of within-word positions had an influence during character-to-word assignment, which was mainly verified during foveal processing. Thus, the overlapping ambiguity between parafoveal words did not interfere with reading. Further investigation is necessary to examine whether current computational models of eye movement control should incorporate statistical cues for word boundaries together with other linguistic factors in their word processing system to account for Chinese reading.     

Accessing,Integrating, and Inhibiting Word Meaning in Poor Comprehenders

This study examined three processes crucial to reading comprehension (semantic access, integration, and inhibition) to identify causes of comprehension impairment. Poor comprehenders were compared to chronological-age controls and vocabulary-age (VA) controls. When listening to homonym primes (“bank”) versus unrelated primes, controls were faster to name pictures related to dominant (money) and subordinate (river) meanings at 250 ms interstimulus interval (ISI) but only showed dominant priming at 1,000 ms ISI, whereas poor comprehenders only showed dominant priming. When listening to subordinately biased sentences ending in homonyms (“John fished from the bank”) versus control sentences, all groups showed priming when naming subordinate (appropriate) pictures at 250 ms ISI: VA controls and poor comprehenders also showed priming when naming dominant (inappropriate) pictures. At 1,000 ms ISI, controls showed appropriate priming, whereas poor comprehenders only showed inappropriate priming. These findings suggest that poor comprehenders have difficulties accessing subordinate word meanings, which can manifest as a failure to inhibit irrelevant information.     

试析句子阅读中的分词加工——含“交集歧义”语段的非歧义句二语习得实验研究

文章以汉语中一个特殊的语言现象——含“交集歧义”语段的非歧义句作为切入口，考察了分词加工在留学生句子阅读过程中不同的理解。文章指出，留学生主要靠词语的熟悉度以及与心理词汇的匹配程度来激活句子的分词加工；语段前的提示信息对分词的启动效应不明显；合词连写对句子理解的干扰性很大，是理解错误的主要原因。因此，适当增加分词连写的材料，有助于留学生理解句子，同时巩固和建构词的结构和界限，为阅读合词连写材料打下基础。     

从英汉"变式语序"看"主题意义"的变化及翻译

英汉两种语言中,都有"常规语序"和"变式语序".同一语义内容用常规语序还是变式语序表达,其效果或主题意义是不一样的.因为改变句子的句法结构或语序,就能够表达不同的主题意义;也就是说,能够用这种方法表达出句子意义的不同重点,从而取得不同的交际价值.因此,在翻译时,要特别注意这种意义及其传达这种意义的语序,并正确区分语序变化所带来的语义差异,才能将其妥贴地反映到译文中,提高译文的质量.     

“未至之前”句式溯源

从语料出发,通过语义分析和形式验证,初步地研究证明：＂未VP之前＂,例如＂未至之前＂句式的源头可上溯到先秦时代蕴含时间义的＂未VP＂句式。＂未VP＂句式既包括＂未至＋处所＋数量＂句式,又包括＂未至＋数量（距离或时间）＂句式。由蕴含时间义的＂未VP＂组成的句子多为复句,分句之间的语义关系类型随着历史的发展逐渐减少。各历史阶段的此类复句均以并列和因果关系句为主。＂未VP之前＂句式的否定词一般由＂未＂、＂尚未＂、＂未曾＂、＂不曾＂、＂没＂、＂没有＂等充当,用来揭示客观情况;受语境和语义的影响,＂未VP之前＂句式的否定词很少由＂不＂充当,＂不VP之前＂重在表达主观态度。     

Same Same,but Different: Word and Sentence Reading in German and English

The current study compared eye fixation patterns during word and sentence processing in a consistent and an inconsistent alphabetic orthography. German and English children as well as adults matched on word reading ability read matched sentences while their eye fixation behavior was recorded. Results indicated that German children read in a more small-unit plodder-like style with more diligent first-pass reading and less rereading. In contrast, English children read in a more large-unit explorer-like style with a greater tendency to skip words, and more regressions. It is important that these cross-linguistic processing differences largely persisted in the adult readers. Orthographic consistency thus influences both local word recognition and global sentence processing in developing and skilled readers.     

谈谈“要么”的语法化

"要么"是现代汉语中常见的一个选择连词,其最早组合是以跨层非短语结构的形式出现在疑问句的末尾,但由于"么"的疑问语气词功能的丧失,致其句法位置发生了转移;在"这么"、"那么"、"怎么"等词类推力量的作用下其进一步词汇化;句中主要动词的存在,促使其词汇化后进一步语法化,而其原型的固有意义使它最终获得了表选择的功能。     

Use of Contextual Information and Prediction by Struggling Adult Readers: Evidence From Reading Times and Event-Related Potentials

We employed self-paced reading and event-related potential measures to investigate how adults of varying literacy levels use sentence context information when reading. Community-dwelling participants read strongly and weakly constraining sentences that ended with expected or unexpected target words. Skilled readers showed N400s that were graded by the cloze probability of the targets, with larger N400s for more unexpected words. Moreover, it took these participants longer to read unexpected targets in strongly than weakly constraining sentences, suggesting a processing cost for revising predictions. Among less skilled readers, a reliable N400 difference was found between expected and unexpected targets only for the strongly constraining sentences. They also took longer when targets were unexpected, regardless of the context. These findings suggest that lower literacy readers could only immediately take advantage of strongly constraining context information to facilitate word processing and that they do not make as much use of predictive processing during comprehension.     

Comprehension of written sentences as a core component of children's reading comprehension

Two experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that sentence processing is an essential mediatory skill between word recognition and text comprehension in reading. In Experiment 1, a semantic similarity judgement task was used with children from Grade 2 to Grade 9. They had to say whether two written sentences had the same (or very similar) meanings or whether the meanings of the two sentences were very different. As expected, performance improved with age both on the high‐frequency words and with increasingly complex sentences. In Experiment 2 with children in Grade 3, scores in written sentence comprehension and vocabulary made the most important unique contribution to the reading comprehension of an expository text. The results are discussed first, in the light of a general framework in which sentence‐level skill is at the core of reading comprehension and second, with reference to the issue of reading assessment.     

语义读入——英语歧义句分析新视点

语句或语词因为语义上的歧义理解产生多种语义读入。词义转类、标点符号、语音、句法结构等都构成对语义读入的影响。语义异常又称为语义破格,英语本族语者的语法知识,除了能分辨歧义句之外,还能判断语义是否有意义或者异常。叶斯柏森的儿童习得语言的理论对认知语义异常现象有启示作用。     

Word learning in children: an examination of fast mapping

Children may be able to gain at least partial information about the meaning of a word from how it is used in a sentence, what words it is contrasted with, as well as other factors. This strategy, known as fast mapping, may allow the child to quickly hypothesize about the meaning of a word. It is not yet known whether this strategy is available to children in semantic domains other than color. In the first study, 2-, 3-, and 4-year-olds were introduced to a novel color, shape, or texture word by contrasting the new term with a well-known word from that domain. They were then tested for their ability to produce and comprehend the new term and for whether they knew what semantic domain the word referred to. The results show that even 2-year-old children can quickly narrow down the meaning of a word in each of the semantic domains examined, although children learned more about shape terms than color or texture words. A second study explored the effects of several variables on children's ability to infer the meaning of a new term. One finding of this study was that if the context is compelling, children can figure out the meaning of a new word even without hearing an explicit linguistic contrast.