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Processing of Proper Names in Mandarin Chinese: a Behavioral and Neuroimaging Study

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Processing of Proper Names in Mandarin Chinese: a Behavioral and Neuroimaging Study Processing of Proper Names in Mandarin Chinese: A Behavioral and Neuroimaging Study Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Linguistics and Literary Studies University of Bielefeld by Huei-Ling Yen Thesis supervisors: Prof. Dr. Dr. Horst M. Müller, University of Bielefeld, Germany Prof. Dr. Gert Rickheit, University of Bielefeld, Germany Dr. Chia-Ying Lee, Academia Sinica, Taiwan Bielefeld, November 22, 2006 Acknowledgements While writing the acknowledgements for this dissertation, one of my biggest dreams that I have had since my childhood, is coming true. This dissertation is the product of countless hours of work as well as support without which I would never have made it. I am deeply grateful to all people who have ever made a contribution to this work. I am much indebted to many teachers for their inspiration and supervision. My greatest thanks go to Professor Horst M. Müller. I thank him for his courage and trust, for accepting me as his Ph. D. student, even though he did not know me. I deeply appreciate his patience in guiding me into the experimental world of linguistics. From stimulus preparation to data analysis, his ‘hard training’ made me what I am today – an independent experimental linguist. Moreover, I thank him for realizing many advanced learning opportunities in conferences, workshops and summer institutes. Thanks also go to Professor Gert Rickheit who wrote reference letters for me and supported my research in all respects. Special appreciation goes to Dr. Chia-Ying Lee, who granted me access to an fMRI. I am extremely grateful for her helpful comments and discussions, for teaching me the ‘art’ of the fMRI data processing in detail and for supporting me in every sense. She even provided me with ideas to solve nursing difficulties while I was a ‘newbie’ mother. I thank her for being my teacher and my friend. This work is a result of the stimulating environments at several institutions. I would like to thank Dr. Sabine Weiss (University of Osnabrück) for her astute advice and Dr. Lorenz Sichelschmidt (University of Bielefeld) for his advice in statistics and generous comment on the chapter in his area of expertise. Many thanks go to professor Chu-Ren Huang (Academia Sinica, Taipei) for enabling me to work in projects of the Institute of Linguistics and the Chinese Knowledge Information Processing Group. I am deeply grateful to him for his encouragement and for giving me the chance to explore a new field. Thanks, too, to Professor Kathleen Ahrens (National Taiwan University) for helpful suggestions and organizational efforts regarding my psycholinguistic experiments in Taiwan. Special appreciation goes to Professor Ho-Ling Liu, who provided me with an opportunity to run the ‘very expensive’ fMRI experiments in Chang Gung Hospital Medical Center in Taiwan. He offered professional help in countless matters concerning fMRI experiments. A big thank also goes to all my colleagues of the experimental neurolinguistic group in Bielefeld, especially Carla Berghoff, Su-Kyoung Kim, Alexandra Wengenroth, for their technical support and fruitful debates. I am also truly indebted to other colleagues and collaborators, such as Chun-Hsien Hsu, who generously commented a chapter of the manuscript and checked the statistic application, Hsu-Wen Huang, Wei-Yun Ma and Yu-Ming Hsieh, who offered processional help in the use of the Sinica corpus and Yen-Bee Ng as well as Bo-Cheng Kuo, who offered cheerful help in the fMRI data processing and invaluable comments on the manuscript. I am also grateful to all colleagues in CKIP Group and Brain and Language Lab, Academia Sinica, Taiwan as well as collaborators in Chang Gung Hospital Medical Center who directly and indirectly offered me help in my experiments. Special appreciation also goes to all experiment participants. I am grateful to Grainne Delany who offered me technical and i organizational support in the faculty. Evan Shellshear, who corrected the language errors in this dissertation, has earned my greatest thanks. Thanks to all of you for the hard work! My warmest gratitude goes to my family for their encouragement and suggestions, to my parents for their love and support throughout my study in Germany. I am truly indebted to my father who taught me to be responsible for myself. He would have been so proud of me, if he could share my joy in finishing this dissertation. Also, I am truly grateful to my mother, (who often flies more than six thousand miles to take care of me and her granddaughter) and to my parents-in-law, who make me feel at home in a ‘non-native’ country. I would like to thank them for encouraging me with the most wonderful sentence of the world - You can do it! My heartfelt thanks go to my husband Dr. Ralf Joest for his love and full support, without which I would never have overcome the frustration and numerous problems. I could not find any appropriate words to express my thanks to him. I am grateful to him for taking care of me when I was ill, encouraging me when difficulties arose and for providing me prudent recommendations when I was stuck on a problem. Thanks, too, to my brothers, Jui-Hung and Yu-Zhou, who helped me a lot during my stay in Taipei in every respect. I am grateful that I have such a wonderful daughter like Man-Yu who has always slept through the night from an age of one-month so that I could have countless restorative nights. Her smiles and concentrated mimic sometimes inspired me to further steps. Thank you, my dearest family. An dieser Stelle möchte ich auch meinen Schwiegereltern Maria und Franz Joest herzlich für ihre Unterstützung danken. Sie waren immer einsatzbereit, um auf ihre Enkeltochter aufzupassen, und haben mir dadurch viel Zeit für die Arbeit und für Tagungsbesuche geschenkt. Der hervorragende Kuchen hat mir neue Power gegeben. Außerdem danke ich ihnen für ihre Geduld und ihr Verständnis, wenn ich während des Schreibens der Arbeit nicht zu Besuchen kam. Vor allem bin ich ihnen dankbar, dass sie mir ein angenehmes Gefühl „wie zu Hause“ gegeben haben und mich mit dem tollen Satz: „Du schaffst das“ aufgemuntert haben. 我最誠摯的感謝要獻給我的家人，謝謝他們的鼓勵和建議。我謝謝父母在我德國求學過程 中的愛及支持。我真心感謝教我對自己負責的父親，遺憾他沒有等我完成論文，倘若他還在世， 一定會為我高興，以我為傲。我更感恩我的母親，經常飛越六千多哩來照顧我。我感激公公婆 婆，讓我在異鄉有家的溫暖。他們總是用世界上最美的一句話「你辦得到」來鼓勵我。我感謝我 的先生雷夫給我的愛與支持，因為有他全力支持，我才可專心完成論文。我找不到任何詞語來表 達我由衷的感謝，謝謝他在我生病時照顧我，在我遇到挫折時鼓勵我，更在我研究遇到困惑時， 給我懇切的建議。我也謝謝我兩個弟弟睿宏和裕洲對我停留台北期間的多項協助。我感激上天賜 給我這麼乖的女兒曼聿，從滿月起就睡整夜，讓我擁有無數安眠的夜晚，有時，她的笑容和認真 的表情是我走下一步的動力。謝謝你們，我最最親愛的家人。 ii My Ph.D. project has been supported by the following organizations: Graduiertetenförderung der Universität Bielefeld, Germany Sonderforschungsbereich 360, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Germany Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica, Taiwan Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica, Taiwan Chang Gung Hospital Medical Center, Taiwan National Science Council, Taiwan The First Annual Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience, Taiwan Organization for Human Brain Mapping, USA British Psychophisiology Society, UK iii In memory of my father iv Contents Introduction: Categories, linguistic categories and their cognitive representation .........................................................................................1 Part I Theoretical Background............................................................4 1. Philosophical linguistics of proper names....................................5 1.1 Introspections in the philosophy of Chinese language........................................5 1.1.1 Proper name as the smallest classifying term: Xunzi (319-230 B.C.) .............5 1.1.2 Proper name as an independent concept: Mozi (470-391 B.C.) .....................7 1.2 Introspections in the philosophy of western language.........................................8 1.2.1 Proper name as a mono-referential expression ..............................................8 1.2.2 Proper name as a low-degree-of-meaning expression .................................10 1.3 Summary...........................................................................................................11 2. Descriptive linguistics of proper names .....................................12 2.1 Phonological characteristics of proper names...................................................12 2.1.1 Segmental dissociation .................................................................................12 2.1.2 Suprasegmental dissociation ........................................................................13 2.2 Morphological features of proper names...........................................................14 2.2.1 Chinese morphological phenomena..............................................................14 2.2.2 Morphology of proper names ........................................................................15 2.3 Grammaticality of proper names .......................................................................16 2.3.1 Classification of proper names ......................................................................16 2.3.2 Syntax of proper names ................................................................................20 2.4 Sociolinguistics of proper names.......................................................................21 2.4.1 Naming patterns of personal names in Chinese ...........................................22 2.4.2 Geographical Naming....................................................................................25 2.5 Summary...........................................................................................................25 3. Cognitive
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