Native and non-native parsing of adjective placement – An ERP study of Mandarin and English sentence processing

Adjectives in English and Mandarin are typically prenominal, but the corresponding grammatical rules vary in subtle ways. Our event-related potential (ERP) study shows that native speakers of both languages rely on similar processing mechanisms when reading sentences with anomalous noun-adjective order (e.g., the vase *white) in their first language, reflected by a biphasic N400-P600 profile. Only Mandarin native speakers showed an additional N400 on grammatical adjectives (e.g., the white vase), potentially due to atypical word-by-word presentation of lexicalized compounds. English native speakers with advanced Mandarin proficiency were tested in both languages. They processed ungrammatical noun-adjective pairs in English like English monolinguals (N400-P600), but only exhibited an N400 in Mandarin. The absent P600 effect corresponded to their (surprisingly) low proficiency with noun-adjective violations in Mandarin, questioning simple rule transfer from English grammar.