Abstract

The Processing of Chinese Epistemic Sentences

Author(s): Zhenghai Qi, Yinchen Qiu, Hulin Ren

This paper examines the extent to which there is a link between Chinese language pragmatic abilities in understanding epistemic sentences for old people, with the goal of providing a better understanding of the factors that predict successful comprehension mechanism among old people. The current study examines the processing of epistemic Chinese sentences in three age groups of old people, i.e. 60-65 year old, 65-70 year old and 70-75 year old. The paper uses event-related potentials (ERP), a measure that allows examination of the mechanisms used during these sentence processing. Results are discussed from the processing mechanism of the old people, and finally conclusions were made with regard to the effect of age group in the process.