Mandarin Chinese ditransitive construction comprehension involves simulating transfer directions: evidence from saccadic tasks

Abstract Language comprehension involves simulating event representations. However, previous research has primarily focused on discrete linguistic cues, paying little attention to how syntactic constructions influence experiential simulations. This study examines Mandarin Chinese ditransitive sentences that imply either of two transfer directions of entities: “giving” (transfer from the subject to the indirect object) and “receiving” (transfer from the indirect object to the subject). We engaged native Chinese participants in saccadic tasks in which they read ditransitive or static existential prime sentences (the preceding sentence), and then performed a target word (the following word) identification task. Experiments 1 and 2 investigated whether entity transfers in different directions are simulated. Results showed that participants responded faster when the transfer direction of the ditransitive prime sentences matched the location of the target object nouns, whereas no such difference was observed after static existential prime sentences. Experiment 3 replicated this pattern using pseudo-verb ditransitive constructions, indicating that simulation effects operate beyond specific verb semantics. These findings suggest that ditransitive constructions systematically trigger mental simulations with spatial specificity, activating implicit directional processing that facilitates identification processes for spatially congruent targets. Our study sheds light on how constructional meanings learned through usage activate embodied cognition in language comprehension.