Role of animacy hierarchy in computing thematic relations during online sentence comprehension

The Slow Prediction Hypothesis suggests that predictions based on the thematic roles of sentence arguments unfold slowly and may not influence early stages of verb processing. The current ERP study tested whether such predictions can be accelerated when arguments exhibit contrastive animacy features and appear in an order that either aligns with or violates animacy hierarchy. Participants read Mandarin SOV ba-construction sentences in which the arguments were presented in either Animate–Inanimate order (e.g., “the dancer ba the ribbon threw-out”) or Inanimate–Animate order (e.g., “the alarm clock ba the roommate woke-up”), with plausibility manipulated by reversing argument order. We measured N400 responses to the verb, and found that when argument order violated animacy hierarchy, retrieving the target verb was easier. Exploratory analyses further revealed that hierarchy-consistent and hierarchy-violating configurations lead to predicting different types of verbs. This pattern suggests that animacy-based thematic information can guide both when and what comprehenders predict during sentence processing. The findings refine the Slow Prediction Hypothesis by demonstrating that thematic role information can facilitate verb prediction under certain conceptual configurations.