Chinese Aphasic Processing of Ba and Bei Constructions

Field: Psychology (Social Sciences)

Event Abstract Back to Event Chinese Aphasic Processing of Ba and Bei Constructions Min Liao1* and Qun L. Gao1 1 Beijing Language and Culture University, China Tang (2004) applies the Ergativization theory of Lemmens (1998) to a unified analysis of Chinese ‘pseudo passives’ and ba /bei constructions. ‘Ergativization’ as applied to these sentences' analysis refers to a syntactic process of turning transitive verbs into intransitive verbs. After ergativization, the subject of the verb cannot be the agent, and the original ability of the verb, ‘eaten,’ to to assign accusative case to the object as internal argument disappears. The present study asked whether ergativization accounts for Chinese aphasic processing, in both comprehension and production, of ba and bei constructions. We can see from Table 1 that ba /bei constructions are all transformed from ‘pseudo passives’; Table 1 shows the difficulty hierarchy of their syntactic structures. The experiment used the Sentence Production Priming Test (SPPT) and Sentence Comprehension Test (SCT). The SPPT elicits production of three sentence types (n = 4 for each type) with active (1), ba construction (2) and bei construction (3). For each target sentence, its semantically reversed counterpart is used as a prime. For each prime-target pair, corresponding black and white line drawings are presented, one depicting the prime event, on the left of the card, and the other depicting its semantically reversed counterpart. For the SCT, the same picture pairs used for the SPPT were utilized. (1) nanhai tui-dao-le nvhai. boy push-down-Asp girl ‘The boy pushed down the girl.’ (2) nanhai ba nvhai tui-dao le. boy BA girl push-down PAR ‘The boy pushed down the girl.’ (3)nvhai bei nanhai tui-dao le. girl BEI boy push-down PAR ‘The girl was pushed down by the boy.’ 40 Mandarin-speaking aphasia patients, varying in age (55-75 years) and length of time post-stroke (6-49 months), and 20 60-year-old normal adult controls were recruited. Table 2 shows that on the SCT, Chinese normal subjects performed above chance on active and ba constructions, but at chance on the bei construction. Chinese aphasia patients performed at chance on all three constructions. Table 3 shows that in the SPPT, Chinese normal subjects have excellent performance on active and ba constructions, but perform at a lower level on the bei construction. However, Chinese aphasia patients performed very poor on all three constructions, with the production of actives being better than that of ba and bei constructions. We conclude that both normal adults and Chinese aphasia patients’ comprehension and production support the notion that ergtivization accounts for performance on ba and bei constructions. Figure 1 Acknowledgements We thank Professor Cynthia Thompson and all the members of her aphasia lab. References Lemmens, M.: Lexical Perspectives on Transitivity and Ergativity: Causative Constructions in English. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam (1998) Tang, Sze-Wing. (2004) Ergativization and Chinese passives. Chinese Language 4, 291-301(in Chinese). Keywords: Ba construction, Bei construction, Chinese aphasia, Ergativization, syntactic movement, Conference: Academy of Aphasia 57th Annual Meeting, Macau, Macao, SAR China, 27 Oct - 29 Oct, 2019. Presentation Type: Platform presentation Topic: Not eligible for student award Citation: Liao M and Gao QL (2019). Chinese Aphasic Processing of Ba and Bei Constructions. Front. Hum. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: Academy of Aphasia 57th Annual Meeting. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2019.01.00100 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 06 May 2019; Published Online: 09 Oct 2019. * Correspondence: Dr. Min Liao, Beijing Language and Culture University, Beijing, China, maggie_liao@126.com Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Min Liao Qun L Gao Google Min Liao Qun L Gao Google Scholar Min Liao Qun L Gao PubMed Min Liao Qun L Gao Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.