字詞為語言之中傳遞訊息的最小核心單位。它的意義往往比字典裡所記錄的概括性解釋來的深廣，其中尤其重要的是說話者或作者透過使用該字詞來表達的思維、情緒、對於事件的感受以及立場等。這層語言使用上呈現出來的言外之意，產生自字詞在真實語境當中經常一同搭檔出現的「搭配詞」的一些語意特徵。因此，字詞與搭配詞之間的緊密關係，讓這些語意特徵逐漸感染到字詞的語意，而形成該字詞裡新增的語意。這部分的語意即是被字典忽略的部分。過去的語言學文獻稱這樣「搭配詞之語意特徵感染」的現象為semantic prosody (語意韻律)，而它的存在驗證了Sinclair (1991) 提出 the idiom principle，說明字詞的意義來自字詞在文章脈絡中和其他字詞的搭配關係，不是獨立且不受語言使用而改變的。本篇研究旨在以事件相關腦電位技術來探討中文受詞的顯著情緒特質和無情緒特質是否影響目標動詞(皆非情緒詞)的處理歷程。本實驗採用情緒判斷作業並操控目標動詞–中文雙字及物動詞–所誘發的感受(正面感受、中性、負面感受)和目標動詞經常搭配之受詞之情緒高度 (高度情緒化、低度情緒化)。實驗結果顯示，目標動詞所誘發的感受會影響晚期的N400和LPC振幅特性。其中誘發正面感受的動詞所產生的N400振幅最小，說明當動詞帶有正面語意特徵時能提升語意提取之歷程，也意味人類對於正向性的偏好。另外，凡能誘發感受(尤其正面感受)的動詞所產生的LPC振幅都比中性動詞的振幅來的大。這說明帶有情緒語意特徵的動詞能在腦海中生成鮮明的畫面，並且激發大腦的認知分析作業。除此之外，這些情緒特徵的動詞所引誘右腦的LPC振幅又比左腦的大，可表示右腦是字詞情緒處理上不可或缺的功臣。本實驗結果似乎無法驗證語意韻律在大腦認知系統上扮演的角色。然而，我們發現這些動詞的情感判斷可能是受高頻率受詞之情緒特質感染而來。因此我們認為透過每日語言使用習慣，動詞和高頻受詞的搭配關係早已在腦海中深植，這些受詞的語意特徵也就被完全接納成為動詞語意的一部分了，故本實驗無法在大腦字詞處理的當下找到語言韻律的證據。

A word tends to express more than its surface meaning does, of which is often denoted down as a firm explanation in a dictionary with no room for negotiation on the realistic use of the word. Since it is a general tendency for a word to co-occur with its habitual close surrounds in an authentic language context, the current study would approach the meaning of word through a phraseological analysis and conforms to the idiom principle proposed by Sinclair (1991), by which the core idea of it has been supported in several language studies nowadays with the adoption of computerized corpora into the investigation of word patterning in languages. The principle argues, as this study also leans towards, that meaning should arise from word patterns, not from word in insolation. An evidence for this tendency of language is semantic prosody, which states the transfer of semantic features from a word’s habitual collocates to the meaning of the word, yielding ultimately, due to recurrent collocational relation, an epistemic or pragmatic reading imposed on the word. The current study aimed to examine the nature of semantic prosody from the cognitive neuroscience perspective, with an expectation to capture its online computation. We anchored on the emotion aspect of semantic prosody, and employed a 3 x 2 factorial design based on two main factors: (1) Valence of the target two-character Mandarin Chinese verbs (Negative verbs, Neutral verbs, Positive verbs), and (2) Polarization of emotion of target verbs’ habitual nominal collocates (Highly emotion-polarized nominal collocates, Low emotion-polarized nominal collocates). Presenting only the target verbs (nominal collocates were invisible in the experiment for our manipulation on “Semantic Prosody” (High) vs. “Weaker or No Semantic Prosody” (Low) conditions), our experiment required participants to evaluate the emotion valence of the verbs. The results showed emotion effects in the N400 and the LPC time windows. The smaller N400 for the positive verbs compared to that of the neutral and negative ones demonstrated easier semantic processing of words with positive emotions. It also suggested the uniqueness of positive verbs, which may due to human’s general bias towards positivity. The enhanced LPC for the emotional (especially the positive) verbs may suggest vivid mental images activated by them and reflect more active cognitive analysis on words with distinctly negative and positive emotion. Furthermore, stronger LPC responses in the right hemisphere may indicate right-hemisphere involvement in processing the affective content of words. The current experiment failed to find an online computation of semantic prosody. However, we did observe that the valence of the verbs may come from the valence of the high-frequency collocates. Thus, we argue that semantic prosody might have been gradually formed during the process when a speaker learns and uses the combination of the verb and its collocates, and is directly associated with the verb once it is consolidated.

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