Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages / Brain and Mind Institute, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Translation interpreting and intercultural studies, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Cognition. 2022 Aug;225:105101. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105101. Epub 2022 Mar 24.
People sometimes interpret implausible sentences nonliterally, for example treating The mother gave the candle the daughter as meaning the daughter receiving the candle. But how do they do so? We contrasted a nonliteral syntactic analysis account, according to which people compute a syntactic analysis appropriate for this nonliteral meaning, with a nonliteral semantic interpretation account, according to which they arrive at this meaning via purely semantic processing. The former but not the latter account postulates that people consider not only a literal-but-implausible double-object (DO) analysis in comprehending The mother gave the candle the daughter, but also a nonliteral-but-plausible prepositional-object (PO) analysis (i.e., including to before the daughter). In three structural priming experiments, participants heard a plausible or implausible DO or PO prime sentence. They then answered a comprehension question first or described a picture of a dative event first. In accord with the nonliteral syntactic analysis account, priming was reduced following implausible sentences than following plausible sentences and following nonliterally interpreted implausible sentences than literally interpreted implausible sentences. The results suggest that comprehenders constructed a nonliteral syntactic analysis, which we argue was predicted early in the sentence.
人们有时会非字面地理解难以置信的句子，例如，将“The mother gave the candle the daughter”理解为“女儿收到了蜡烛”。但是他们是如何做到的呢？我们对比了一种非字面句法分析理论和一种非字面语义解释理论。前者认为，人们在理解“The mother gave the candle the daughter”时，不仅会考虑到这种非字面但合理的双宾语（DO）分析，还会考虑到这种非字面但合理的介词宾语（PO）分析（即，在女儿之前加上 to）；而后者则认为，人们仅仅通过语义处理就能理解这句话的意思。只有前者而非后者的理论假设，在理解“母亲把蜡烛给了女儿”时，人们不仅会考虑到字面但难以置信的 DO 分析，还会考虑到非字面但合理的 PO 分析（即，包括在女儿之前加上 to）。在三个结构启动实验中，参与者先听到一个合理或不合理的 DO 或 PO 启动句，然后先回答一个理解问题，或者先描述一个与与格事件相关的图片。与非字面句法分析理论一致的是，在理解不合理的句子时，启动效应比理解合理的句子时要小，而在理解非字面解释的不合理句子时，启动效应比理解字面解释的不合理句子时要小。这些结果表明，理解者构建了一种非字面的句法分析，我们认为这种分析在句子的早期就已经被预测到了。
