Abstract:

is study approaches the relationship between Chinese and English semantic representations by means of ERP (Event-Related Potentials) technology with Chinese college students at different English (L2) levels as subjects. Comparisons are made for amplitudes and latencies of N400 elicited by semantically congruous and incongruous sentences, in conditions of three different complicated kinds of English sentence patterns and their Chinese counterparts, with the factor of working memory ability taken into consideration. The results show that for the CET-4 group there are significant differences between the English "Wh" special questions and their Chinese counterparts' N400 effects, whereas no difference is found with regard to the other two sentence types; and for the TEM8 group no difference is found in any of the three sentence patterns. This suggests that the relationship between two languages' semantic representations depends on the students' proficiency of the second language, and the sentence syntax complexity could also be a factor for lower proficient subjects.