Wang Yufang, Witteman Jurriaan, Schiller Niels O
Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2025 Jul;78(7):1461-1473. doi: 10.1177/17470218241281868. Epub 2024 Sep 28.
According to Levelt's language production model, to name an object, speakers must first conceptualise and lexicalise the object before its name can be articulated. Conceptualisation is conducted through the semantic network that exists at the conceptual level, with the highly activated concept(s) activating lexical items at the lemma level, that is, lexicalisation. So far, research focused mostly on semantic categories (i.e., semantic interference) but less so on animacy-a concept that is correlated with semantic categories. To investigate the role of this semantic feature in language production, we conducted a picture-word interference study in Mandarin Chinese, varying animacy congruency and controlling for classifier congruency while recording behavioural and electrophysiological responses. We observed an animacy interference effect together with a larger N400 component for animacy-incongruent versus congruent picture-word pairs, suggesting animacy-congruent concepts may be in closer proximity and hence lead to a stronger spreading of activation relative to animacy-incongruent concepts. Furthermore, a larger P600 component was observed for classifier-incongruent versus classifier-congruent picture-word pairs, suggesting syntactically driven processing of classifiers at the lemma level.
根据莱尔特的语言生成模型，要说出一个物体的名称，说话者必须先对该物体进行概念化和词汇化，然后才能说出它的名字。概念化是通过概念层面存在的语义网络进行的，高度激活的概念会激活词元层面的词汇项，即词汇化。到目前为止，研究主要集中在语义类别（即语义干扰）上，而对与语义类别相关的生命性概念关注较少。为了研究这一语义特征在语言生成中的作用，我们用汉语进行了一项图片-单词干扰研究，改变生命性一致性，并在记录行为和电生理反应的同时控制量词一致性。我们观察到了生命性干扰效应，并且对于生命性不一致与一致的图片-单词对，前者的N400成分更大，这表明生命性一致的概念可能距离更近，因此相对于生命性不一致的概念会导致更强的激活扩散。此外，对于量词不一致与一致的图片-单词对，前者观察到更大的P600成分，这表明在词元层面存在量词的句法驱动加工。
