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Abstract:
The causal directionality encoded in certain verbs is called
implicit verb causality. Some verbs (NP1 biased verbs) favor the
subject as the causer and some verbs (NP2 biased verbs) favor the
object as the causer (Au, 1986; Brown and Fish, 1983; Garvey and
Caramazza, 1974). The effect of implicit causality can be
illustrated in pronoun resolution. In a two-clause sentence in
which the subordinate clause begins with "because," the sentence
is more congruent and yields faster responses when the pronoun in
the "because"- clause refers to the NP that is favored by the
verb (Caramazza et.al., 1977; Caramazza and Fupta, 1979; Garnham
and Oakhill, 1985; Vonk, 1985a, 1985b). However, the details and
mechanism of this effect are not clear. The focusing hypothesis
suggests that the implicit verb causality has an on-line effect
(McDonald, MacWhinney, 1995) while the integration hypothesis
suggests instead that the effect takes place at the phase of
sentence integration (Garham, et.al., 1996). Some researchers
have pointed out that the integration of Chinese sentences is not
immediate and is quite distributed compared with English (Zhang
and Danks, 1989). However, not much research has been done in the
fields of sentence comprehension and pronoun resolution in
Chinese. This paper examines the effect of implicit verb
causality in determining the antecedent of a pronoun in Chinese
sentence comprehension. Sentences contained two participants, an
implicit causality verb, and a subsequent "because"- clause. In
experiment 1, in which a self-paced reading paradigm was used,
subjects responded faster to "because"-clauses where the implicit
verb causality was consistent rather than inconsistent with the
assignment of the pronoun as indicated by other information in
the sentence. A cross modal probe paradigm measured the
activation of candidate antecedents in the following two
experiments. In experiment 2, in which the probe point was at the
end of the sentence, the result was consistent with experiment 1.
In experiment 3, in which the probe point was immediately after
the pronoun, subjects did not respond faster to the participant
who was favored rather than unfavored by the implicit verb
causality. In a fourth experiment the eye movements of subjects
were recorded in response to sentences in which the two
participants were of different sexes. Results show that implicit
verb causality has its effect at integration rather than
immediately after the pronoun. In this study, self-paced reading,
cross modal probe, and eye tracking paradigms yielded convergent
results that favor the integration hypothesis.
Garnham, A, Traxler, M, Oakhill, J, and Gernsbacher, M.A.(1996).
The locus of implicit causality effects in comprehension.
Journal of memory and language,
35, 517--543.
McDonald, J.L., and MacWhinney, B. (1995). The time course of
anaphor resolution: Effects of implicit verb causality and
gender.
Journal of memory and language,
34, 543--566.
Sanford, A.J., and Garrod, S.C.(1989). What, When, and How?
Question of immediacy in anaphoric reference resolution.
Language and cognitive process,
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