What’s in a Name? Electrophysiological Differences in Processing Proper Nouns in Mandarin Chinese

Bernard Jap, Yu Yin Hsu, Lavinia Salicchi, Yuxi Li

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

The current study examines how proper names and common nouns in Chinese are cognitively processed during sentence comprehension. EEG data was recorded when participants were presented with neutral contexts followed by either a proper name or a common noun. Proper names in Chinese often consist of characters that can function independently as words or be combined with other characters to form words, potentially benefiting from the semantic features carried by each character. Using cluster-based permutation tests, we found a larger N400 for common nouns when compared to proper names. Our results suggest that the semantics of characters do play a role in facilitating the processing of proper names. This is consistent with previous behavioral findings on noun processing in Chinese, indicating that common nouns require more cognitive resources to process than proper names. Moreover, our results suggest that proper names are processed differently between alphabetic languages and Chinese language.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationWorkshop on Cognitive Aspects of the Lexicon, CogALex 2024 at LREC-COLING 2024 - Workshop Proceedings
EditorsMichael Zock, Emmanuele Chersoni, Yu-Yin Hsu, Simon De Deyne
Pages79-85
Number of pages7
ISBN (Electronic)9782493814456
Publication statusPublished - 2024
Externally publishedYes
Event8th Workshop on Cognitive Aspects of the Lexicon, CogALex 2024 - Torino, Italy
Duration: 20 May 2024 → …

Publication series

NameWorkshop on Cognitive Aspects of the Lexicon, CogALex 2024 at LREC-COLING 2024 - Workshop Proceedings

Conference

Conference8th Workshop on Cognitive Aspects of the Lexicon, CogALex 2024
Country/TerritoryItaly
CityTorino
Period20/05/24 → …

Keywords

  • common nouns
  • ERP
  • Mandarin Chinese
  • proper names

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