Main content
From ‘No, she does’ to ‘Yes, she does’: Negation processing in negative yes–no questions by Chinese users of English
Date created: | Last Updated:
: DOI | ARK
Creating DOI. Please wait...
Category: Project
Description: In response to negative yes–no questions (e.g., Doesn’t she like cats?), typical English answers (Yes, she does/No, she doesn’t) peculiarly vary from those in Chinese (No, she does/Yes, she doesn’t). What are the processing consequences of these markedly different conventionalised linguistic responses to achieve the same communicative goals? And if English and Chinese speakers process negative questions differently, to what extent does processing change in Chinese-English sequential bilinguals? Two experiments addressed these questions. Chinese-English bilinguals, English and Chinese monolinguals (N=40/group) were tested in a production experiment (Expt. 1). The task was to formulate answers to positive/negative yes–no questions. The same participants were also tested in a comprehension experiment (Expt. 2), in which they had to answer positive/negative questions with time-measured yes/no button presses. In both Expt. 1 & Expt. 2, English and Chinese speakers showed language-specific yes/no answers to negative questions. In Expt. 2, English speakers showed a reaction-time advantage over Chinese speakers in negation conditions. Bilingual’s performance was in-between that of the L1 and L2 baseline. These findings are suggestive of language-specific processing of negative questions. They also signal that the ways in which bilinguals process negative questions are susceptible to restructuring driven by the second language.