Jap Bernard A J, Hsu Yu-Yin, Politzer-Ahles Stephen
Department of Humanities, Language and Translation, School of Arts and Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Metropolitan University, Hong Kong.
Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong.
PLoS One. 2025 May 13;20(5):e0322341. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0322341. eCollection 2025.
Previous studies conducted across multiple languages have found processing differences between patient-first and agent-first word orders. However, the results of these studies have been inconsistent as they do not identify a specific event-related potential (ERP) component as a unique correlate of thematic role processing. Furthermore, these studies generally confound word order with frequency, as patient-first structures tend to be infrequent in the languages that have been investigated. There is evidence that frequency of syntactic structure plays an important role in language processing. To address this potential confounding variable, we test Standard Indonesian, a language where passive structures occur with high frequency and are comparable in frequency to active structures. In Standard Indonesian, there is evidence from acquisition, corpus, and clinical data indicating that the use of passive is frequent. In the present study, 60 native speakers of Indonesian read 100 sentences (50 active and 50 passive) while EEG was recorded. Our findings reveal neural correlates of thematic role processing in the passive sentence condition - specifically, a positive shift corresponding to a P600 on the verb, and a more sustained positivity on the second noun phrase. These findings support existing evidence that sentences with a 'non-default' word order impose increased cognitive load, as reflected by ERPs, even when they occur with higher frequency in the language.
此前开展的多项跨语言研究发现，患者优先语序和施事优先语序在处理过程中存在差异。然而，这些研究的结果并不一致，因为它们没有确定一个特定的事件相关电位（ERP）成分作为主题角色处理的独特关联指标。此外，这些研究通常将语序与频率混淆，因为在已调查的语言中，患者优先结构往往不常见。有证据表明，句法结构的频率在语言处理中起着重要作用。为了解决这个潜在的混淆变量，我们测试了标准印尼语，这是一种被动结构出现频率高且与主动结构频率相当的语言。在标准印尼语中，来自习得、语料库和临床数据的证据表明被动语态的使用很频繁。在本研究中，60名印尼语母语者阅读100个句子（50个主动句和50个被动句），同时记录脑电图。我们的研究结果揭示了被动句条件下主题角色处理的神经关联——具体来说，动词上对应于P600的正向偏移，以及第二个名词短语上更持续的正向性。这些发现支持了现有证据，即具有“非默认”语序的句子会增加认知负荷，如ERP所反映的那样，即使它们在语言中出现的频率更高。
