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Cognitive Linguistics and the Study of Chinese
Edited by Dingfang Shu, Hui Zhang and Lifei Zhang
[Human Cognitive Processing 67] 2019
► pp. 227–259

Chapter 8
A neurocognitive approach to Chinese idiom comprehension

An ERP study

| Nanjing Normal University

In Chinese, three-character idioms abound, represented by a ‘base’ form as well as variants according to the context in which they are embedded. How base-forms and their variants are contextually processed is controversial. In the present study, event-related potentials (ERPs) data were collected to investigate time course and neural activity in the processing of Chinese three-character idioms and their variants in discourse dialogic contexts (e.g. literally biased and figuratively biased contexts). The results are discussed in regard to three proposed models of idiom processing and theories of idiom variations elaborated by Cognitive Linguistics, Relevance Theory and Glucksberg’s proposals. The data provide neural evidence that different types of discourse context play a facilitative role in the processing of base-forms and variants.

Keywords: discourse context, ERP, three-character idioms, idiom variants
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Models of idiom processing
    • 1.2ERP studies of Chinese idiom processing
    • 1.3Perspectives on idioms and their variants
    • 1.4The goals and hypotheses of the present study
    • 1.5ERP components in the present study
  • 2.Methods
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2Materials and design
    • 2.3Experimental procedure
    • 2.4EEG recording
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Visual inspection of ERPs
    • 3.2Results
      • A. Base-forms VS variants in literally biased contexts
      • B. Base-forms VS variants in figuratively biased contexts
      • C. Base-forms in literally biased context VS in figuratively biased context
      • D. Variants in literally biased contexts VS in figuratively biased contexts
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusions and limitations
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 20 November 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.67.10zha
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