AUTHOR=Lo Chia-Wen , Brennan Jonathan R. 

TITLE=EEG Correlates of Long-Distance Dependency Formation in Mandarin Wh-Questions

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

VOLUME=15

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2021.591613

DOI=10.3389/fnhum.2021.591613

ISSN=1662-5161

ABSTRACT=<p>Event-related potential components are sensitive to the processes underlying how questions are understood. We use so-called “covert” <italic>wh</italic>-questions in Mandarin to probe how such components generalize across different kinds of constructions. This study shows that covert Mandarin <italic>wh</italic>-questions do not elicit anterior negativities associated with memory maintenance, even when such a dependency is unambiguously cued. <italic>N</italic> = 37 native speakers of Mandarin Chinese read Chinese questions and declarative sentences word-by-word during EEG recording. In contrast to prior studies, no sustained anterior negativity (SAN) was observed between the cue word, such as the question-embedding verb “wonder,” and the <italic>in-situ wh</italic>-filler. SANs have been linked with working memory maintenance, suggesting that grammatical features may not impose the same maintenance demands as the content words used in prior work.</p>