Abstract: The Present study explored the effects of syntactic cues and semantic cues onsimple sentence comprehension in Chinese. Using an agent judgement task, Theexpriment examined how Chinese readers used syntactic cues (i.e., word order) andsemantic cue (reversibility) in processing simple sentences. The results showed thatboth syntactic and semantic cues played important roles in the processing of Chinese.Using a speeded grammatical judgement task, Expriment 2 showed that syntacticfactor had strong influences on sentence processing, but semantic factor had no significant effect. Furthermore, no interaction between syntactic and semantic factorswas found in these experiments. TIs data pattern suggested that syntactic cue was thedominant factor in sentence Processing, while semantic cue was the secondary factorwhich operated when the task emphasized semantic analysis. These results weredicussed within the syntactic autonomy theory which assumed that syntactic analysis isan autonomous process independent of semantic influence.

Key words: semence comprehension, syntax, semantics, syntactic autonomy