Re-examination of Chinese Semantic Processing and Syntactic Processing: Evidence from Conventional ERPs and Reconstructed ERPs by Residue Iteration Decomposition (RIDE)

Whether syntactic processing occured earlier than semantics during Chinese sentence reading was further explored by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) as Chinese speakers read individually presented Chinese simple sentences and made semantic plausibility judgments. There are three types of stimuli: congruent sentences (CON), sentences with a semantically violation (SEM), and sentences with combined semantic and syntactic violation (SEM + SYN). The ERPs were analyzed by using both conventional ERP method and new method residue iteration decomposition (RIDE) that aims to compensate trial-to-trial latency variability. Overall, there is non-significant difference between SEM and SEM + SYN in the earlier N400 time window. These results suggest that syntactic processing in Chinese does not occur earlier than semantic processing.