Abstract: Meaning activation of Chinese syntactic category ambiguous words in biased sentence context was concerned in this study, in which cross modal priming paradigm and character decision task were used, the 134 participants were students from Beijing Normal University. The results showed that sentence context worked on meaning activation at a very early stage. Although context effect interacted with relative frequency, at the shortest ISI appropriate meaning was facilitated more than inappropriate meaning. Furthermore, in inappropriate context, dominant meaning was not activated, while relative frequency interacted with context, and sustained dominant meaning after the effect of context declined. It suggests that context plays an early role of meaning access of Chinese syntactic ambiguous words, with facilitating appropriate meaning and inhibiting inappropriate meaning which was possibly activated. And relative frequency interacts with context in meaning activation of ambiguous words. These evidences support the interactive theory, in which lexical processing is influenced by information from a higher level.

Key words: syntactic category ambiguous words, sentence context, facilitation and inhibition, interactive theory, Chinese