title: Topicality matters: position-specific demands on Chinese discourse processing.
abstract: We report an event-related potential study designed to explore the nature of context-induced topicality in Chinese discourse processing. Topic is what an utterance is about and represents the most prominent discourse element, which occurs sentence-initially in Chinese. We tested question-answer pairs consisting of topic and non-topic questions followed by different continuations (Topic-Continuity, Topic-Shift, Novel-Topic). ERPs were measured at distinct sentential positions and revealed that sentence-initially information processing is guided by topicality, which affects N400 and Late Positivity effects alike. In non-initial positions, the given-new distinction is the dominant principle, also modulating N400 and Late Positivity. The language processor hence utilizes a few core operations for information processing that depend on position-specific constraints.
authors.affiliation: Independent Emmy Noether-Research Group/Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Mainz, Germany. hung@uni-mainz.de
authors.forename: Yu-Chen
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Hung
authors.forename: Petra B
authors.initials: PB
authors.lastname: Schumacher
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002681:China; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male