Processing Evidence for the Grammatical Encoding of the Mass/Count Distinction in Mandarin Chinese

Using the Visual World Paradigm, the current study aimed to explore whether the mass/count distinction is determined by syntax in Mandarin Chinese, focusing on classified nouns in nominal phrases. By using dual-role classifiers, ontological count and mass nouns, and phrase structures with and without biased syntactic cues we found that the mass/count distinction is initially computed using phrase structure but can be overridden in cases where the syntax is incompatible with nouns’ ontological meanings. The results indicate that in Mandarin Chinese, syntactic cues can be rapidly used to make predictions about upcoming information in real time processing.