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The brain knows the difference: Two types of grammatical violations
Abstract
The brain has been shown to honor the fundamental linguistic difference between semantic and syntactic information. Here we demonstrate that it even further indicates the necessity to distinguish between two differential syntactic processes: that is to say between the processing of phrase structure information necessary to build up syntactic structures on-line and verb argument structure information crucial to build up representations of who is doing what to whom. The former process is reflected in the event-related brain potentials (ERPs) as an anterior negativity followed by a late centro-parietal positivity, whereas the latter process is reflected as a centro-parietal negativity-positivity pattern. The different ERP patterns clearly suggest that the theoretically assumed difference between local syntactic structure building and argument structure processing is neurophysiologically real.
... Such a comparison yields well-documented ERP components, namely N400 (Deutsch & Bentin, 2001;Molinaro et al., 2016;Schmitt, Lamers, & Münte, 2002), left anterior negativity (LAN; Barber & Carreiras, 2005;Barber, Salillas, & Carreiras, 2004;Gunter, Friederici, & Schriefers, 2000;Molinaro, Vespignani, & Job, 2008), and the P600 (Barber & Carreiras, 2005;Barber et al., 2004;Deutsch & Bentin, 2001;Gunter et al., 2000;Molinaro et al., 2008;Popov & Bastiaanse, 2018;Schmitt et al., 2002;Wicha, Moreno, & Kutas, 2004), which are believed to reflect underlying language-related processes. In addition to investigating the mechanism underlying gender (dis)agreement processing, the study also focuses on the repair processes believed to be reflected in the P600 component (e.g., Friederici, 1995Friederici, , 2002Friederici & Jacobsen, 1999;Friederici & Meyer, 2004;Kaan, Harris, Gibson, & Holcomb, 2000;Molinaro, Barber, & Carreiras, 2011;Popov & Bastiaanse, 2018). The study investigates in depth whether nouns with semantic gender are repaired in a different way than nouns with syntactic gender. ...
... It is followed by a centro-parietal positive shift (P600), from 500 ms on. The P600 is assumed to represent integration difficulty in the form of repair and reanalysis (Friederici, 1995(Friederici, , 2002Friederici & Jacobsen, 1999;Friederici & Meyer, 2004;Kaan, Harris, Gibson, & Holcomb, 2000;Molinaro, Barber, & Carreiras, 2011). This is the stage at which the parser tries to repair the syntactic incongruity and integrate it with the rest of the discourse at the structural level. ...
... One of the consequences of such a paradigm is that the parser will try to repair the syntactically incongruent structure. According to previous studies (Friederici, 1995(Friederici, , 2002Friederici & Jacobsen, 1999;Friederici & Meyer, 2004;Kaan, Harris, Gibson, & Holcomb, 2000;Molinaro, Barber, & Carreiras, 2011;Popov & Bastiaanse, 2018), the repair (and reanalysis) processes take place in the late syntactic stage (P600). Moreover, Hagoort and Brown (2000) suggest that the P600 consists of two distinct stages, an early stage in which integration processes take place (usually 500-700 ms post-stimulus onset), and a late stage in which repair and reanalysis take place (700-900 ms post-stimulus onset). ...
In this sentence reading study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the processing mechanism of article-noun gender disagreement in two kinds of nouns in Italian. The first are nouns with syntactic gender (il trenoM ‘train’; la sediaF ‘chair’) for which the processing and repair of gender disagreement entails only one repair option, namely for the article (morphosyntactic repair). The second kind are nouns with semantic gender (il bambinoM ‘boy’, la bambinaF ‘girl’). Here, there are two options for processing and repairing gender mismatch: repairing the article (morphosyntactic repair) or repairing the noun (both morphosyntactic and semantic repair). Both classes of nouns elicited the LAN, indicating that gender disagreement is always registered at the morphosyntactic level. In addition, the P600 was elicited in both conditions, but was larger for semantic gender, reflecting a more complex repair for this class of nouns.
... This was investigated in the current study by comparing prefixed and suffixed words where the affix either precedes or follows the base, respectively. It has been claimed that 'the temporal order of the detection of a particular type of violation indeed reflects processing stages' (Friederici et al., 1996(Friederici et al., , p. 1222, and some research suggests that prefixed words may be privileged and undergo faster processing than suffixed words due to their position at the beginning instead of the end of a word, particularly when the prefix conveys information about the word's lexical class (Friederici et al., 1996;Friederici & Meyer, 2004;Friederici & Weissenborn, 2007;Hagoort et al., 2003;Van den Brink & Hagoort, 2004). Specifically, these and other event related potential (ERP) studies have shown that the typical ELAN effect, obtained approximately 120-200 ms after the visual or auditory presentation of a word with a category violation, occurs earlier when "word category information was signaled by the prefix, but late with respect to word onset when word category information was provided by the suffix" (Friederici & Weissenborn, 2007, p. 52; see also Friederici, Gunter, Hahne, & Mauth, 2004;Hahne & Friederici, 2002 ). ...
... This suggests a parsing preference for base-affix rather than affix-base sequences, a finding that has also been supported by other cross-linguistic studies of word recognition and production (e.g., Cole et al., 1989;Cutler et al. 1995;Hawkins & Cutler, 1988;and others). It also argues against the claim that prefixes undergo lexical-semantic interpretation prior to suffixes (Friederici et al., 1996Friederici & Meyer 2004;Friederici & Weissenborn, 2007;Hagoort et al., 2003;Van den Brink & Hagoort, 2004). The nonword results also failed to support the linearity hypothesis since all types of prefixed nonwords were either less accurate than suffixed nonwords, or showed no difference in RT. ...
... The findings for prefixed words, on the other hand, went in the opposite direction, with the most structurally complex category changing words responded to the fastest, while the least complex lexicalized words were the slowest. In accordance with Friederici and colleagues (e.g., Friederici & Meyer, 2004;Friederici & Weissenborn, 2007) the only way to account for these results is by presuming that category changing prefixes likely privilege syntactic-category information such that it is processed first. This suggests that at a processing level individuals distinguish between syllabic incipits such as ri-, in-, il-, im-that are category changing from those that are simply unmarked as it is the case of lexicalized words. ...
In this paper we address the theoretical debate about the representation and processing of derived words, presenting the results of a lexical decision task experiment aiming to investigate the visual recognition of Italian prefixed and suffixed words and nonwords. The study was specifically designed to test hypotheses stemming from the manipulation of two linguistic factors: (1) linearity (i.e., sequential order of morphemes), and (2) various degrees of complexity of the internal structure of particular types of Italian derived words.
Our findings show that suffixed and prefixed words and nonwords are not generally processed in the same way because they are not a homogenous set. Prefixes and suffixes instead engender different processing strategies, as has also been suggested by Cole et al. (1989) and Hay (2001). Moreover our data reveal that derived words are not necessarily processed more quickly or slowly than simple words (Bertram et al., 2000), but that their processing varies according to the nature of the affixes, the order in which they appear, and the information encoded in the affix.
... Some of the existing research on prefixed words indicates that they may be privileged and undergo faster processing than suffixed words due to a prefix's position at the beginning of a word, particularly when the prefix conveys information about the word's lexical class (Friederici et al. 1996;Friederici and Meyer 2004;Friederici and Weissenborn 2007;Hagoort et al. 2003;Van den Brink and Hagoort 2004;Hahne and Friederici 2002). However, prefixes have also been found to increase processing difficulty due to greater ambiguity resulting from their shorter length and homographic resemblance to initial word segments where the same sequence of letters is not functioning as a prefix (Assink et al. 2000;Baayen et al. 2007;Hudson and Buijs 1995;Kim et al. 2015;Laudanna et al. 1994;Laudanna and Burani 1995;Marslen-Wilson et al. 1994;Taft and Ardasinski 2006). ...
... Contrary to this linearity hypothesis, however, suffixed words were generally found to be responded to more quickly and accurately than prefixed items. These results thus fail to support the claim of Friederici and colleagues that prefixes undergo lexical-semantic interpretation prior to suffixes (Friederici et al. 1996Friederici and Meyer 2004;Friederici and Weissenborn 2007;Hagoort et al. 2003;Hahne and Friederici 2002;Van den Brink and Hagoort 2004). However, their research has primarily been conducted with German and Dutch verbs presented in phrases or sentence contexts with manipulations violating subject agreement, argument structure, and selection constraints. ...
... In contrast to the suffixed word findings, the interaction between linearity and complexity produced a completely opposite pattern of results for prefixed words, with the most complex category changing items showing the fastest and most accurate responses, while the least complex lexicalized words were now the slowest and least accurate. As previously discussed, although the fact that responses to suffixed words were generally faster and more accurate than prefixed words fails to support the linearity hypothesis and the work of Friederici and colleagues overall, the results for the prefixed words alone actually do concur with their findings (Friederici et al. 1996;Friederici and Meyer 2004;Friederici and Weissenborn 2007). In particular, our finding that prefixed category changing words showed the fastest and most accurate responses, supports their claim that prefixes conveying information about a word's lexical class can privilege the processing of that information. ...
The majority of words in most languages consist of derived poly-morphemic words but a cross-linguistic review of the literature (Amenta and Crepaldi in Front Psychol 3:232-243, 2012) shows a contradictory picture with respect to how such words are represented and processed. The current study examined the effects of linearity and structural complexity on the processing of Italian derived words. Participants performed a lexical decision task on three types of prefixed and suffixed words and nonwords differing in the complexity of their internal structure. The processing of these words was indeed found to vary according to the nature of the affixes, the order in which they appear, and the type of information the affix encodes. The results thus indicate that derived words are not a uniform class and the best account of these findings appears to be a constraint-based or probabilistic multi-route processing model (e.g., Kuperman et al. in Lang Cogn Process 23:1089-1132, 2008; J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 35:876-895, 2009; J Mem Lang 62:83-97, 2010).
... That is, lexicosemantic (i.e., meaning information relevant to content words [lemmas]) and morphosyntactic information (e.g., tense, syntactic ge~der) is retrieved. It is also during 0 this stage, that verb subcategorization and argument structure information is thought to be accessed and mapped onto the initial syntactic structure and the relation berween words is established (Friederici & Kotz, 2003;Ffiedefid,-Haliiie, ·&Mecklinget, 1996;Friederici & Meyer, 2004}. Morphosynt:i.ctic ...
... Bilateral posterior superior temporal activation (BA 22) al. so was found by Ni ct al. {2000). These findings are in keeping with ERP studies, reporting an N400 effect associated with processing sentences with semantic violation~· (e.g., *They like their coffee with cream and the mustache; Friederici, 2002;Friederici & Frisch, 2000;Frisch, Hahne, & Friederici 1 2004;Friederici & Meyer, 2004;Hagoort, 2003;Kielar & Joanisse, 2010;Kur.as & Fedcrmeier, 2000;Kut.is ...
... lh contrast, violations of the correct number -0f arguments resulted in an N400 effect (Friederici & Frisch, 2000;Frisch et al., 2004;Frisch & Schle~ewsky, 2Q01;Frie4eri<=:i & Meyer, 2004). Furthermore, several ERP studies of argument structure violations have found a biphasic N400-P600 response {Friederici, 2002;Friederici & Kotz, 2003;Friederici & Meyer, 2004;Friederici & Frisch, 2000;Kielar, Meltzer-Aascher, & lha'mpson, in press). The N400 seems to reflect attempts to integrate lexical-semantic information when arguments are missing {e.g., *John gives a car), or when· illicit arguments are present (e.g., *John sleeps a bed; *john sneezed the doctor) {Frisch & Schlesewsky, 2001; Kielar et al., in press). ...
One of the primary characteristics of agrammatism is impaired production (and sometimes comprehension) of grammatical morphology or functional categories, which affects both bound grammatical morphemes and freestanding function words. On most accounts, agrammatism is associated with relatively preserved derivational morphology (Caramazza & Miceli, 1989; Faroqi-Shah & Thompson, 2004; Miceli & Caramaza, 1988), although there are exceptions to this (see Fix, Dickey, & Thompson, 2005; Kohn & Melvold, 2000; Mathews & Obler, 1997; also see Luzzatti, Mondini, & Semenza, this volume). This chapter addresses patterns of impaired functional categories in agrammatism and discusses theories that attempt to determine the source of such deficits.
... That is, lexicosemantic (i.e., meaning information relevant to content words [lemmas]) and morphosyntactic information (e.g., tense, syntactic gender) is retrieved. It is also during this stage that verb subcategorization and argument structure information is thought to be accessed and mapped onto the initial syntactic structure and the relation between words is established Friederici, Hahne, & Mecklinger, 1996;Friederici & Meyer, 2004). Morphosyntactic violations, such as subject-verb agreement mismatches, have been found to evoke left dominant anterior negativity (LAN) between 300 and 500 ms across languages (Angrilli et al., 2002;Gunter, Stowe, & Mulder, 1997;Kutas & Hillyard, 1983;Penke et al., 1997; but see Osterhout & Nicol, 1999;Münte, Matzke, & Johannes, 1997), whereas subcategorization and verb argument structure violations may elicit a LAN or N400 (Coulson, King, & Kutas, 1998;Friederici & Frisch, 2000;Frisch, Hahne, & Friederici, 2004). ...
... Bilateral posterior superior temporal activation (BA 22) also was found by Ni et al. (2000). These findings are in keeping with ERP studies, reporting an N400 effect associated with processing sentences with semantic violations (e.g., *They like their coffee with cream and the mustache; Friederici, 2002;Friederici & Frisch, 2000;Frisch, Hahne, & Friederici, 2004;Friederici & Meyer, 2004;Hagoort, 2003;Kielar & Joanisse, 2010;Kutas & Federmeier, 2000;Kutas & Hillyard, 1980Münte, Say, Clahsen, Schiltz, & Kutas, 1999). Although anatomically imprecise, the neural generators of the N400 have been associated with posterior brain regions. ...
... Friederici and colleagues found early anterior effects in response to violations of word-category constraints and violations of verb subcategorization requirements (e.g., *The cousin visited to the violinist), reflecting interruptions in generation of syntactic structure. In contrast, violations of the correct number of arguments resulted in an N400 effect (Friederici & Frisch, 2000;Frisch et al., 2004;Frisch & Schlesewsky, 2001;Friederici & Meyer, 2004). Furthermore, several ERP studies of argument structure violations have found a biphasic N400-P600 response (Friederici, 2002;Friederici & Meyer, 2004;Friederici & Frisch, 2000;Kielar, Meltzer-Aascher, & Thompson, in press). ...
Sentence processing requires rapid integration of information over a short period of time. Models of language processing suggest that syntactic, semantic, and phonological detail must be accessed and coordinated within milliseconds to successfully produce or understand sentences. Exactly
how this is accomplished and what neural mechanisms are engaged in real time to carry out these processes is not completely understood. Research examining the neural mechanisms associated with sentence processing elucidates a left hemisphere network involving both anterior and posterior
brain regions, although studies show that the right hemisphere is also engaged to some extent. This chapter discusses what is known about the neural systems involved in sentence production and comprehension. Two bodies of research are discussed: neurolinguistic evidence derived from lesion deficit
studies with brain-damaged people, and neuroimaging research examining the neural correlates of sentence processing in healthy individuals.
... . 그러나 ELAN은 LAN보다 이른 시간에 매우 짧은 시간 구간에서 검출되므로, LAN 과는 다른, 자동적이고 무의식적 처리에 특화된 ERP 성분으로 규정되는 경우가 많다 (Friederici, Steinhauer and Pfeifer, 2002;Friederici et al., 2004;Hahne and Friederici, 1999 (Foder, 1983 (Frazier,1987 (Coulson et al., 1998;Gunter, Stowe and Mulder, 1997;Osterhout and Mobley, 1995). ...
... 반면, 어휘/개념적 의미 통합 처리의 어려움은 공통적으로 N400 효과를 발생시킨다 (Kutas and Hillyard, 1980;Kutas and Federmeier, 2000;Lau, Phillips and Poeppel, 2008 (Friederici, Hahne and Mecklinger, 1996;Friederici and Meyer, 2004;Hagoort, 2003;Martin-Loeches et al., 2005;Newman et al., 2007;Roehm and Haider, 2009 Gunter and Friederici(1999) [그림 2] 어휘 범주 위반에 대한 다양한 ERP 반응들 뿐만 아니라, 동일한 위반 조건에서 ELAN이 아닌 N400 성분이 검출되는 것을 확인한 연구들도 보고된 바 있다 Gunter and Friederici, 1999 ...
In this paper, previous evidence on the syntax-related ERP components was reviewed, and the problems in the functional interpretations of these components were examined. With regard to ELAN, which is known as a component reflecting syntactic violation, an inconstancy problem could arise because the occurrence of ELAN depends on how experiment stimulus are presented. Moreover, the onset of ELAN appears to precede the onset of the relevant grammatical violation. In the case of P600, the arguments concerning the so-called 'semantic P600' were critically evaluated. Given that it is still controversial how to interpret ELAN and semantic P600 functionally, new ERP evidence from still under-examined language is necessary, e.g. Korean.
... This major conceptual change, grounded on a rich set of original empirical findings collected in normal volunteers and in brain-damaged patients, concerns both the representational content of unconscious processes, and their relation to top-down executive control. Schematically, within this relatively short period the dominant view moved from a modular (Fodor, 1983), automatic (Schneider and Shiffrin, 1977) and "stupid" unconscious, to a heterogeneous unconscious which includes flexible (Naccache, 2008;Van den Bussche et al., 2008) and high-level cognitive processes Naccache et al., 2005;Kouider and Dehaene, 2007) sensitive to various influences including: endogenous spatio-temporal attention (Kentridge et al. 1999;Naccache et al., 2002;Kentridge et al., 2008), conscious consideration of task instructions and stimuli sets (Greenwald et al., 2003;Van Opstal et al., 2010), and executive control (van Gaal et al., 2008;van Gaal et al., 2009;Reuss et al., 2014;Schouppe et al. 2014) . ...
... Since then, a rich literature investigated the precise psychological and neural properties of the N400 and of other correlates of semantic processing such as the early left anterior negativity (ELAN), or the late positive complex (LPC, also described as P600) (Pulvermü ller et al., 2009;Kutas and Federmeier, 2011). While early studies described this ERP component as a marker of syntactic violation (Friederici and Meyer, 2004), recent studies challenged this interpretation by showing LPC in response to semantic violations or anomalies in the absence of any syntactic violation (Hill et al., 2002;Grieder et al., 2012). In addition, an LPC could be recorded in response to various manipulations of verbal semantics such as inversion of causality (e.g. ...
Semantic processing of visually presented words can be identified both on behavioral and neurophysiological evidence. One of the major discoveries of the last decades is the demonstration that these signatures of semantic processing, initially observed for consciously perceived words, can also be detected for masked words inaccessible to conscious reports. In this context, the distinction between conscious and unconscious verbal semantic processing constitutes a challenging scientific issue. A prominent view considered that while conscious representations are subject to executive control, unconscious ones would operate automatically in a modular way, independent from control and top-down influences. Recent findings challenged this view by revealing that endogenous attention and task-setting can have a strong influence on unconscious processing. However, one of the major arguments supporting the automaticity of unconscious semantic processing still stands, stemming from a seminal observation reported by Marcel in 1980 about polysemous words. In the present study we reexamined this evidence. We present a combination of behavioral and event-related-potentials (ERPs) results that refute this view by showing that the current conscious semantic context has a major and similar influence on the semantic processing of both visible and masked polysemous words. In a classical lexical decision task, a polysemous word was preceded by a word which defined the current semantic context. Crucially, this context was associated with only one of the two meanings of the polysemous word, and was followed by a word/pseudo-word target. Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence of semantic priming of target words by masked polysemous words was strongly dependent on the conscious context. Moreover, we describe a new type of influence related to the response-code used to answer for target words in the lexical decision task: unconscious semantic priming constrained by the conscious context was present both in behavior and ERPs exclusively when right-handed subjects were instructed to respond to words with their right hand. The strong and respective influences of conscious context and response-code on semantic processing of masked polysemous words demonstrate that unconscious verbal semantic representations are not automatic.
... The authors argue that the P800 could reflect the "re-analysis of the prosodic cue (F0) that violates the expected intonation contour in an attempt to integrate prosodically incongruous information" (Astésano, et al., 2004, p. 181 The presence of a P600-like component in our paradigm also raises interesting questions related to the ongoing debate about the situations which readily elicit this marker. At first, the P600 was thought of as a component marking the processing of all sorts of syntactic violations (phrase and argument structure (Friederici & Meyer, 2004), morphosyntax (Friederici & Meyer, 2004), garden-path sentences (Frisch, Kotz, von Cramon, & Friederici, 2003;Osterhout, et al., 1994), etc.). In brief, the P600 has been considered a good measure of syntactic anomaly and parsing difficulty (Friederici, Steinhauer, Mecklinger, & Meyer, 1998;Hagoort, Brown, & Groothusen, 1993;Osterhout & Holcomb, 1992). ...
... The authors argue that the P800 could reflect the "re-analysis of the prosodic cue (F0) that violates the expected intonation contour in an attempt to integrate prosodically incongruous information" (Astésano, et al., 2004, p. 181 The presence of a P600-like component in our paradigm also raises interesting questions related to the ongoing debate about the situations which readily elicit this marker. At first, the P600 was thought of as a component marking the processing of all sorts of syntactic violations (phrase and argument structure (Friederici & Meyer, 2004), morphosyntax (Friederici & Meyer, 2004), garden-path sentences (Frisch, Kotz, von Cramon, & Friederici, 2003;Osterhout, et al., 1994), etc.). In brief, the P600 has been considered a good measure of syntactic anomaly and parsing difficulty (Friederici, Steinhauer, Mecklinger, & Meyer, 1998;Hagoort, Brown, & Groothusen, 1993;Osterhout & Holcomb, 1992). ...
Imagine Mary asks Jack to buy her a rose or a book and he in fact gets her both. In doing so, he indicates that he interpreted or inclusively (i.e., a rose, or a book, or both). However, had he been asked to buy a rose OR a book (with contrastive accent), Jack might have inferred that Mary intended him to buy one gift or the other, but not both; in this case he interpreted the utterance exclusively. In this paper, we test 32 participants and investigate the electrophysiological correlates of contrastive accent and of the 'not both' inference which it can generate. Following Relevance Theory, and contra Levinson's theory of Generalized Conversational Implicatures, we argue that pragmatic inferencing based on such a contextual cue will elicit a distinct electrophysiological component, marking extra processing effort (i.e., the P600). Our results demonstrate the presence of a P3a associated with contrastive accent and a P600-like component as well as a Left Anterior Negativity when contrastive accent leads to pragmatic inferencing. We discuss our results in the context of the linguistic-pragmatic literature and argue that our data are consistent with the idea that the exclusive interpretation requires a deeper analysis than the inclusive interpretation.
... Whether LAN and ELAN conform two functionally different modulations remains unclear, however. For example, the LAN has also been found for word-category violations (Friederici & Meyer, 2004;Hagoort, 2003a;Hinojosa, Martin-Loeches, Casado, Muñoz, & Rubia, 2003). In addition, early anterior negativities are also observed for morphosyntactic violations (Hagoort, 2003b;Münte & Heinze, 1994) and specifically for gender agreement violations (Deutsch, Bentin, & Katz, 1999). ...
... The idea of early anterior negativities reflecting automatic processing has influenced many well-regarded neurocognitive models (e.g., Hagoort, 2003a;Ullman, 2001;Schlesewsky & Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, 2013; for a review see: Steinhauer & Drury, 2012). In addition, this idea is in line with previous studies reporting early anterior negativities for morphosyntactic violations (e.g., Hagoort, 2003b;Münte & Heinze, 1994), or later anterior negativities to word category violations (Friederici & Meyer, 2004;Hinojosa et al., 2003). As concluded in an extensive review by Steinhauer and Drury (2012), the functional dissociation between early and late anterior negativities remains largely uncertain. ...
Models of language comprehension assume that syntactic processing is automatic, at least at early stages. However, the degree of automaticity of syntactic processing is still controversial. Evidence of automaticity is either indirect or has been observed for pairs of words, which might provide a poor syntactic context in comparison to sentences. The present study investigates the automaticity of syntactic processing using Event-Related Brain Potentials (ERPs) during sentence processing. To this end, masked adjectives that could either be syntactically correct or incorrect relative to a sentence being processed appeared just prior to the presentation of supraliminal adjectives. The latter could also be correct or incorrect. According to our data, subliminal gender agreement violations embedded in a sentence trigger an early anterior negativity-like modulation, whereas supraliminal gender agreement violations elicited a later anterior negativity. First-pass syntactic parsing thus appears to be unconsciously and automatically elicited. Interestingly, a P600-like modulation of short duration and early latency could also be observed for masked violations. In addition, masked violations also modulated the P600 component elicited by unmasked targets, probably reflecting that the mechanisms of revising a structural mismatch appear affected by subliminal information. According to our findings, both conscious and unconscious processes apparently contribute to syntactic processing. These results are discussed in line with most recent theories of automaticity and syntactic processing.
... " Second, syntactic priming, alternatively termed grammatical priming, encompasses multiple dimensions of syntactic relationships between prime and target. These dimensions include gender and number agreement [30][31][32] , word category congruency 27,33 , and subject/auxiliary verb-verb correspondence 34 . Syntactic priming engenders a facilitative effect on syntactic processing when syntactically congruent prime-target pairs are presented. ...
The current study investigated the hemispheric dynamics underlying semantic and syntactic priming in lexical decision tasks. Utilizing primed-lateralized paradigms, we observed a distinct pattern of semantic priming contingent on the priming hemisphere. The right hemisphere (RH) exhibited robust semantic priming irrespective of syntactic congruency between prime and target, underscoring its proclivity for semantic processing. Conversely, the left hemisphere (LH) demonstrated slower response times for semantically congruent yet syntactically incongruent word pairs, highlighting its syntactic processing specialization. Additionally, nonword data revealed a hemispheric divergence in syntactic processing, with the LH showing significant intrahemispheric syntactic priming. These findings illuminate the intrinsic hemispheric specializations for semantic and syntactic processing, offering empirical support for serial processing models. The study advances our understanding of the complex interplay between semantic and syntactic factors in hemispheric interactions.
... Importantly, the effect that we have reported here is well-established in the literature. Left Anterior Negativity (LAN) around 350 ms into viewing words (Figure 3) has been linked to difficulty in an early, seemingly automatic type of syntactic analysis (occurring prior to the more centrally distributed N400 component associated with the retrieval of semantics) and processing of morpho-syntactic structure (Gunter, Stowe, & Mulder, 1997;Friederici & Meyer, 2004;Friederici, Gunter, Hahne, & Mauth, 2004;Friederici & Weissenborn, 2007;Steinhauer & Drury, 2012). Crucial in the interpretation of the present results is the fact that these LAN effects are traditionally obtained by means of presenting sentences in a sequential word-by-word format. ...
During reading, the brain is confronted with many relevant objects at once. But does lexical processing occur for multiple words simultaneously? Cognitive science has yet to answer this prominent question. Recently it has been argued that the issue warrants supplementing the field's traditional toolbox (response times, eye-tracking) with neuroscientific techniques (EEG, fMRI). Indeed, according to the OB1-reader model, upcoming words need not impact oculomotor behavior per se, but parallel processing of these words must nonetheless be reflected in neural activity. Here we combined eye-tracking with EEG, time-locking the neural window of interest to the fixation on target words in sentence reading. During these fixations, we manipulated the identity of the subsequent word so that it posed either a syntactically legal or illegal continuation of the sentence. In line with previous research, oculomotor measures were unaffected. Yet, syntax impacted brain potentials as early as 100 ms after the target fixation onset. Given the EEG literature on syntax processing, the presently observed timings suggest parallel word reading. We reckon that parallel word processing typifies reading, and that OB1-reader offers a good platform for theorizing about the reading brain.
... Importantly, the effect that we have reported here is well-established in the literature. Left Anterior Negativity (LAN) around 350 ms into viewing words (Figure 3) has been linked to difficulty in an early, seemingly automatic type of syntactic analysis (occurring prior to the more centrally distributed N400 component associated with the retrieval of semantics) and processing of morpho-syntactic structure (Gunter, Stowe, & Mulder, 1997;Friederici & Meyer, 2004;Friederici, Gunter, Hahne, & Mauth, 2004;Friederici & Weissenborn, 2007;Steinhauer & Drury, 2012). Crucial in the interpretation of the present results is the fact that these LAN effects are traditionally obtained by means of presenting sentences in a sequential word-by-word format. ...
... Die Amplitude der P600 gilt zwar zum einen als abhängige Größe, die mit syntaktischer Komplexität bei der Verarbeitung korrekter Stimuli relatiert ist (Osterhout et al., 1994;Friederici et al., 1998Friederici et al., , 2002, sie wird aber auch bei einer Vielzahl unterschiedlicher ungrammatischer Stimuli beobachtet. So werden P600-Effekte unter anderem berichtet für Verletzungen der Phrasenstruktur (Friederici & Meyer, 2004;Hagoort et al., 1993) und morphosyntaktischer Beschränkungen (Hagoort, 2003;Palolahti et al., 2005;Rossi et al., 2005) sowie für Kongruenzverletzungen (Friederici & Frisch, 2000). Aus diesem Grund gilt die P600 auch als Indikator für morphosyntaktische Reparatur-und Reanalyseprozesse (Friederici, 2002(Friederici, , 2011Friederici et al., 1993;Neville et al., 1991). ...
Die Arbeit untersucht die Schnittstelle von Grammatiktheorie und Psycholinguistik.
Die Zielstellung ist es einerseits, nach Gemeinsamkeiten in den theoretischen Annahmen und Modellierungen der beiden Teildisziplinen zu suchen. Andererseits soll auch das Potential aufgezeigt werden, das für beide Bereiche entsteht, wenn Methoden und Erkenntnisse der Schwesterdisziplin in die jeweiligen eigenen Fragestellungen und Modellierungen einfließen.
Als empirische Basis werden Aspekte der Flexionsmorphologie betrachtet.
Für den Bereich der Grammatiktheorie werden hierfür zwei essentielle Konzepte (Unterspezifikation und Subanalyse) herausgearbeitet und gezeigt, dass diese in den verschiedensten Theorietypen zur Anwendung kommen. Es wird weiterhin aufgezeigt, dass aktuelle psycholinguistische Modelle zur Flexion keinen unmittelbaren Bezug zu diesen Konzepten aufweisen.
Im empirischen Teil der Arbeit werden drei Experimente berichtet (zwei EKP-Studien und eine behaviorale Studie), die die Fragestellung untersuchen, ob die von der theoretischen Linguistik theorieübergreifend postulierten Konzepte auch bei der tatsächlichen Verarbeitung menschlicher Sprache relevant sind. Dabei kann für beide Konzepte empirische Evidenz erbracht werden, die die Hypothese stützt, dass Unterspezifikation und Subanalyse auch psychologisch reale Konzepte darstellen.
... To facilitate the comparison between our results and those from Indo-European languages, the experimental conditions were designed to mirror the violations (that is, word category violation for syntactic violation and verb's selectional restriction violation for SEM) used by previous ERP studies of Indo-European languages such as German and French 63,64 . Different from previous studies of Indo-European languages, the word category of the critical word is not marked by grammatical inflections in our study due to the fact that Chinese generally lacks grammatical inflections. ...
Human languages are based on syntax, a set of rules which allow an infinite number of meaningful sentences to be constructed from a finite set of words. A theory associated with Chomsky and others holds that syntax is a mind-internal, universal structure independent of semantics. This theory, however, has been challenged by studies of the Chinese language showing that syntax is processed under the semantic umbrella, and is secondary and not independent. Here, using intracranial high-density electrocorticography, we find distinct spatiotemporal patterns of neural activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus that are specifically associated with syntactic and semantic processing of Chinese sentences. These results suggest that syntactic processing may occur before semantic processing. Our findings are consistent with the view that the human brain implements syntactic structures in a manner that is independent of semantics.
... Firstly, only exogenous ERPs have an interpretation of absolute waveforms (brain stem response, like the AEP): the P3 is an ERP that reflects a cognitive mechanism. Secondly, studies may vary depending on the modality of the presentation, the design, or the input parameters (see Friederici & Meyer, 2004), thus, the expectation that an effect should occur in a specific polarity is (of course, only for the longer words). Instead, these more complex phonological patterns may be neurally encoded at a 'higher' level. ...
This dissertation studies different learning mechanisms of phonological processing by conducting behavioral and neurophysiological experiments in the artificial grammar learning paradigm. The main goal is to identify the phonological computations that give rise to the complex combinatorics underlying human languages by providing new knowledge about whether linguistic constraints that are learned in laboratory situations are directly “channeled” into incremental, real-time phonological predictive processing. It also explores whether the learning outcome depends on the type of learning mechanisms (domain-specific vs. domain-general) and the computational complexity of the patterns. It achieves this by examining the nature of the neural commitment produced by language exposure via electroencephalogram (EEG).
The specific patterns that were tested in this dissertation are well-motivated from the perspective of formal language theory and theoretical linguistics. Processing of these phonological patterns must ultimately be integrated into the complete cognitive neuroscience of language that links abstract mathematical grammars to real-time theories of word processing and ultimately to biologically plausible neural computations. The dissertation, therefore, contributes to a growing body of research that highlights the nature of acquired linguistic knowledge at the neural level that behavioral measures cannot address. It provides new insight into how artificial language learning causes acquisition mechanisms to incorporate linguistic rules acquired in the laboratory.
This dissertation’s contribution to knowledge is threefold. Firstly, it has been shown that human phonological learning mechanisms are restricted mainly by domain-specific computational constraints. Secondly, specific phonological rules that are
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acquired in laboratory situations are directly channeled into incremental, real-time phonological predictive processing evidenced at the millisecond level by ERP components. Thirdly, domain-specific learning mechanisms associated with implicit learning and domain-general learning mechanisms associated with explicit learning converge on similar knowledge states, but with different underlying neural mechanisms.
The hope is that these results will illustrate how formal language theory can be integrated with the cognitive neuroscience of language, and how experimental techniques from experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience can reveal new insights into the critical properties of human language such as the complex interplay between domain-specific and domain-general components of cognition.
... For example, if participants read the sentence "It was a breezy day so the boy went outside to fly a _____" and 90% of them responded with the word "kite", then the word "kite" has a cloze probability of 90% and would be considered a highly predictable sentence continuation. A sentence that violates phrase structure rules or is otherwise ungrammatical (e.g., agreement errors, such as "The doctors is late for surgery") can trigger an early left anterior negativity (ELAN) as well as the P600 component (Friederici & Meyer, 2004;Friederici, 2002). By norming stimuli for acceptability, which is a proxy for sentence grammaticality that is more accessible to naive raters (Huang & Ferreira, 2020), stimuli that do or do not evoke ERPs linked to structural violations can be selected, depending on the research question. ...
In recent years, a growing number of studies have used cortical tracking methods to investigate auditory language processing. Although most studies that employ cortical tracking stem from the field of auditory signal processing, this approach should also be of interest to psycholinguistics—particularly the subfield of sentence processing—given its potential to provide insight into dynamic language comprehension processes. However, there has been limited collaboration between these fields, which we suggest is partly because of differences in theoretical background and methodological constraints, some mutually exclusive. In this article, we first review the theories and methodological constraints that have historically been prioritized in each field and provide concrete examples of how some of these constraints may be reconciled. We then elaborate on how further collaboration between the two fields could be mutually beneficial. Specifically, we argue that the use of cortical tracking methods may help resolve long-standing debates in the field of sentence processing that commonly used behavioral and neural measures (e.g., ERPs) have failed to adjudicate. Similarly, signal processing researchers who use cortical tracking may be able to reduce noise in the neural data and broaden the impact of their results by controlling for linguistic features of their stimuli and by using simple comprehension tasks. Overall, we argue that a balance between the methodological constraints of the two fields will lead to an overall improved understanding of language processing as well as greater clarity on what mechanisms cortical tracking of speech reflects. Increased collaboration will help resolve debates in both fields and will lead to new and exciting avenues for research.
... A smaller number of studies have investigated the ERP correlates of VAS processing, with inconsistent findings. In healthy participants, violations of the number of arguments (e.g., *Anne sneezed the doctor and the nurse) were associated with a N400-P600 pattern (Friederici & Frisch, 2000;Friederici & Meyer, 2004;Kielar et al., 2012), while violations of the verb subcategorization frame (e.g., *Anna knows that the inspector helped to the banker 2 ) and violations of structural preference (*The doctor charged the patient was lying) elicited a P600, but not an N400 (Friederici & Frisch, 2000;Osterhout and Holcomb, 1993;Osterhout et al., 2 The sentence is an adaptation from German (see Friederici & Frisch, 2000, for details). ...
Evidence from psycholinguistic research indicates that sentence processing is impaired in Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA), and more so in individuals with agrammatic (PPA-G) than logopenic (PPA-L) subtypes. Studies have mostly focused on offline sentence production ability, reporting impaired production of verb morphology (e.g., tense, agreement) and verb-argument structure (VAS) in PPA-G, and mixed findings in PPA-L. However, little is known about real-time sentence comprehension in PPA. The present study is the first to compare real-time semantic, morphosyntactic and VAS processing in individuals with PPA (10 with PPA-G and 9 with PPA-L), and in two groups of healthy (22 young and 19 older) individuals, using event-related potentials (ERP). Participants were instructed to listen to sentences that were either well-formed (n=150) or contained a violation of semantics (e.g., *Owen was mentoring pumpkins at the party, n=50), morphosyntax (e.g., *The actors was singing in the theatre, n=50) or VAS (*Ryan was devouring on the couch, n=50), and were required to perform a sentence acceptability judgment task while EEG was recorded. Results indicated that in the semantic task both healthy and PPA groups showed an N400 response to semantic violations, which was delayed in PPA and older (vs. younger) groups. Morphosyntactic violations elicited a P600 in both groups of healthy individuals and in PPA-L, but not in PPA-G. A similar P600 response was also found only in healthy individuals for VAS violations; whereas, abnormal ERP responses were observed in both PPA groups, with PPA-G showing no evidence of VAS violation detection and PPA-L showing a delayed and abnormally-distributed positive component that was negatively associated with offline sentence comprehension scores. These findings support characterizations of sentence processing impairments in PPA-G, by providing online evidence that VAS and morphosyntactic processing are impaired, in the face of substantially preserved semantic processing. In addition, the results 3 indicate that on-line processing of VAS information may also be impaired in PPA-L, despite their near-normal accuracy on standardized language tests of argument structure production.
... Friederici et al., 1996Friederici et al., , 1993Hahne & Friederici, 1999, 2002Steinhauer & Drury, 2012), the P600 (Osterhout & Holcomb, 1992;Osterhout & Mobley, 1995;A. Friederici et al., 1996;Hahne & Friederici, 1999;Weyerts et al., 2002), and even a biphasic N400-P600 ERP (A. Friederici & Meyer, 2004). Both the LAN and P600 components have been observed in monolinguals and early bilinguals, in addition to late bilinguals, the population in question for this study (Steinhauer & Drury, 2012;Isel et al., 2007). ...
This paper lays out a pilot study conducted to examine the roles of Cross-Linguistic Influence (CLI) and cognitive resources on processing and parsing in a second language. The present study builds upon one conducted by Andersson et al. (2018) investigating behavioral and electrophysiological (EEG) responses to syntactic violations in a first or second language. The main goal of the previous study was to investigate whether the presence or absence of a syntactic feature (in this case V2 word order) would predict electrophysiological and/or behavioral responses to syntactic (word order) violations in the second language. The study found that while +/-V2 in the L1 did not seem to influence behavioral data, it did show some influence on the EEG results. The goal of the present study is twofold. We seek first to replicate the previous online and offline results found in a-V2 population, and then investigate the role of linguistic and cognitive variables in modulating the anticipated effect. We show that the same effect demonstrated by the-V2 participants in Andersson et al. (2018) is borne out in our French participants in the form of an anterior P600 effect. Furthermore, our data show a relationship between offline measures of cognitive functioning and online responses to linguistic stimuli. This work has implications for our understanding of cross-linguistic influence in L2 acquisition, as well as the role of domain general cognitive functions in processing language.
... Therefore, integrating the negation of action requires more semantic information than integrating the negation of subject properties. In addition, it remains controversial as to whether there exists a positive or negative correlation between the amplitude of P600 and the difficulty of sentential integration (Osterhout and Holcomb, 1992;Friederici and Meyer, 2004;Hagen et al., 2006;Liu et al., 2008). The reason why verbs evoked larger P600 in our experiment is that verbs are more difficult than nouns to integrate within the sentential structure. ...
Neural mechanisms behind noun and verb processing during the course of language comprehension are ubiquitously separate, yet it remains highly controversial as to which factor, syntax or semantics, should be responsible for this separation. This paper conducted an event-related potential (ERP), sentence comprehension experiment as an attempt to resolve this issue. The experiment used Chinese sentences in the configuration of noun phrase + (“not/no”) + noun/verb/noun-verb-ambiguous-word, which excluded grammatical or syntactic factors that could hint at the lexical categories of sentence-final target words. Results showed significantly distinct ERP components of P200, N400, and P600 between noun and verb processing in native speakers, indicating that semantic factors are essential for the differentiated neural mechanisms behind noun and verb processing. Distinct P200, N400, and P600 also manifested between noun and noun-verb-ambiguous-word processing, but not between verb and noun-verb-ambiguous-word processing. This suggests that lacking clues on lexical category renders the dynamic properties of the ambiguous words more salient than the static properties, thus causing interpretation of such words more likely as verbs. This further elaborates the crucial role of semantic factors in noun and verb processing.
... For example, event-related potentials (ERPs) including error-related potentials (ErrPs) reflect events where a human subject feels wrong or strange. It is known that ERPs can reflect semantic incongruity grammatical violoations in language processing [32], [33]. ERPs could be informative for programming comprehension, especially for bug fix. ...
Expert programmers' eye-movements during source code reading are valuable sources that are considered to be associated with their domain expertise. We advocate a vision of new intelligent systems incorporating expertise of experts for software development tasks, such as issue localization, comment generation, and code generation. We present a conceptual framework of neural autonomous agents based on imitation learning (IL), which enables agents to mimic the visual attention of an expert via his/her eye movement. In this framework, an autonomous agent is constructed as a context-based attention model that consists of encoder/decoder network and trained with state-action sequences generated by an experts' demonstration. Challenges to implement an IL-based autonomous agent specialized for software development task are discussed in this paper.
... Single trials were then averaged together to obtain a stable waveform ERP for each condition and each electrode for every subject. Changes in the N400 were computed between 350 and 550 ms (Curran, Tucker, Kutas, & Posner, 1993;Kutas & Federmeier, 2011) and changes in the P600 were computed between 550-750 and 750-950 ms (Friederici & Meyer, 2004). ...
School‐aged and adolescent children continue to demonstrate improvements in how they integrate and comprehend real‐time, auditory language over this developmental time period, which can have important implications for academic and social success. To better understand developmental changes in the neural processes engaged during language comprehension in this age group, we use electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate how 8‐9 year old, 12‐13 year olds, and adults process semantics and syntax in naturally‐paced, auditory sentences. Participants listened to semantically and syntactically correct and incorrect sentences and were asked to complete an acceptability judgment task. When processing a semantic error, developmental differences were observed in theta, but not the N400, suggesting the N400 may be too gross a measure to identify more subtle aspects of semantic development that occur in the school years. For the syntactic task, errors resulted in a larger P600 and greater beta decrease than correct sentences, but the amplitude and location of the P600 and amplitude of beta decreases differed as a function of age, suggesting specialization of syntactic skills is ongoing through adolescence. The current findings shed new light on the development of the neural oscillations supporting language comprehension and suggest that the neural substrates underlying semantic processing reach adult‐like levels at a younger age than those underlying syntactic processing.
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... Changes in the N400 were computed between 350-550 msec and averaged across electrodes F1,Fz,F2,C1,Cz,C2,CP1,CPz,CP2 (Kutas & Federmeier, 2011;Curran, Tucker, Kutas & Posner, 1992). Changes in the P600 were computed between 550-950 msec and averaged across posterior electrodes P5,P3,P1,Pz,P2,P4,P6,PO5,PO3,PO1,POz,PO2,PO4,PO6,O1, Oz,O2 (Friederici & Meyer, 2004). Significant differences between conditions were determined at an alpha value of .05. ...
Event related potentials (ERPs) and time frequency analysis of the EEG can identify the temporally distinct coordination of groups of neurons across brain regions during sentence processing. Although there are strong arguments that ERP components and neural oscillations are driven by the same changes in the neural signal, others argue that the lack of clear associations between the two suggests oscillatory dynamics are more than just time frequency representations of ERP components, making it unclear how the two are related. The current study seeks to examine the neural activity underlying auditory sentence processing of both semantic and syntactic errors to clarify if ERP and time frequency analyses identify the same or unique neural responses. Thirty-nine adults completed an auditory semantic judgment task and a grammaticality judgment task. As expected, the semantic judgment task elicited a larger N400 and greater increase in theta power for semantic errors compared to correct sentences and the syntactic judgment task elicited a greater P600 and beta power decrease for both grammatical error types compared to syntactically correct sentences. Importantly, we identified a significant relationship between the N400 and P600 ERPs and theta and beta oscillatory dynamics during semantic and syntactic processing. These findings suggest that ERPs and neural oscillations measure similar neural processes; however, unaccounted for variance may indicate that neural oscillations provide additional information regarding fluctuations in power within a given frequency band. Future studies that vary semantic and syntactic complexity are necessary to understand the cognitive processes that are indexed by these oscillations.
... (김종도, 2004 (Reddy, 1979;Lakoff and Johnson, 1980;Lakoff, 1993 (Grice, 1975;Searle, 1979 (Coulson, King & Kutas, 1998;Friederici, Hahne, & Mecklinger, 1996;Friederici & Meyer, 2004;Gunter, Stowe & Mulder, 1997;Osterhout & Holcomb, 1992) 최근에는 위 계적으로 구조화 된 언어 정보, 즉 논항과 술어 간의 통사적/의미적 관계를 처리하는 과정에서 감지된 다양한 위반 요 소나 추후의 재분석 과정을 반영하는 것으로 보는 견해들이 설득력을 얻어가는 추세이다 (Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, 2002;Kuperberg, 2007 (Altmann, 1999;Altmann & Kamide, 1999;Ashby et al., 2005;Bicknell et al., 2010;Boland et al., 1995;Conklin et al., 2004;Koenig et al., 2003;Matsuki et al., 2011;Warren & McConnell, 2007 ) (Boston et al., 2008;Hale, 2001;Jurafsky, 1996;Levy, 2008;Narayanan & Jurafsky, 2005;Pado et al., 2009, Roland et al., 2012Staub et al., 2010;Staub, 2011;Vasishth, 2003 ...
... Its estimated sources were mostly located in the left DLPFC (inferior frontal gyrus) and the right fusiform gyrus (see Fig. 4). While early studies described this ERP component as a marker of syntactic violation (Friederici and Meyer, 2004), recent studies challenged this interpretation by showing LPC in response to semantic violations or anomalies in the absence of any syntactic violation . In addition, a LPC could be recorded in response to various manipulations of verbal semantics such as inversion of causality (e.g. ...
The study of cognitive functions so complex such as language and consciousness, and of their interactions, is a challenge at the boundaries between medicine (intensive care, anesthesia, neurology) and cognitive neuroscience. Semantic processing provides our perceptual experiences with a level of abstraction allowing a variety of conceptual functions such as object recognition, social cognition, or language. In this thesis, we explored the relationships between the verbal semantic processing and consciousness using a double approach: first, by studying healthy subjects in conscious and unconscious condition (using visual masking), and secondly by studying patients with disorders of consciousness in the auditory modality. Through this work we provided empirical evidence of unconscious semantic representations. We then proposed that the two main brain signatures of semantic processing observed in ERPs (N400 and LPC / P600) could be integrated in a two stages model: a first unconscious stage (corresponding to the N400), followed or not by a second stage of processing corresponding to conscious semantics (LPC / P600). Exploring the differences between conscious and nonconscious processing, we showed that nonconscious semantic processing is sensitive to conscious top-down influences. These results refute a strictly automatic conception of unconscious cognition. Our results also shed new light on the respective roles of the two hemispheres in the resolution of semantic ambiguity. The exploration of high-level cognitive abilities, - such a verbal semantic processing - in patients affected with disorder of consciousness should enable significant advancements in their medical management.
... 즉, 제2언어 학습자의 표적어 의미처리에 대한 ERP 연구는 형태-통사처리에 대한 ERP 연구에 비해 크게 부족하며, 2) 주로 동사와 목적어 명 사 사이의 전역적 의미적합성 위반에 대하여 원어민의 경우와 동일하게 N400이 검출되었 다는 것을 보고하는 데 그치고 있다(Hahne 2001, Hahne & Friederici 2001. 이와 같은 연구 현황은 제2언어 처리와 모국어 처리의 공통점 /차이점을 밝히는 것이 심리언어학의 주요 이 슈로서(Clahsen & Felser, 2006 등) 의미처리(의 인지기제) 차원에서도 당연히 성립한다는 점 을 고려할 때 크게 아쉬운 부분이라 할 수 있Friederici & Meyer, 2004;Gunter, Stowe & Mulder, 1997;Osterhout & Holcomb, 1992). 그러나 최근 에는 위계적으로 구조화 된 언어 정보, 즉 논항 과 술어 간의 통사적/의미적 관계를 처리하는 과정에서 감지된 다양한 위반 요소나 추후의 재 분석 과정을 반영하는 것으로 보는 견해들이 설 득력을 얻어가는 추세이다(Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, 실험 1에서는 형용사와 명사 사이의 국지적 의미적합성과 목적어 명사와 동사 사이의 전역적 의미적합성이 모두 충족 된 기준 조건, 국지적 의미적합성만이 위반된 국지적 위반 조건, 전역적 의미적합성만이 위 반된 전역적 위반 조건, 국지적, 전역적 의미 적합성이 모두 위반된 이중적 위반 조건의 문 장들을 이용하여(표 1 참조) 한국어 원어민 화 자들을 대상으로 하는 ERP 실험을 진행하였 다. 문장은 모두 어절 별로 화면에 제시되었 으며, 피험자들은 각 문장을 읽은 후 의미 적 합성에 대하여 판단하도록 지시받았다. ...
... The P600 emerges around 500 msec poststimulus onset and has a centroparietal scalp distribution. This late positivity is reliably evoked by a variety of syntactic anomalies, including violations of phrase structure (Friederici & Meyer, 2004;Hagoort, Brown, & Groothusen, 1993), verb argument structure (Friederici & Frisch, 2000;Osterhout & Hagoort, 1999), or morphosyntactic constraints (e.g., Newman et al., 2007;Hagoort, 2003;Münte, Matzke, & Johannes, 1997). Late positivities in response to syntactic anomalies were, thus, also referred to as syntactic positive shift (Hagoort et al., 1993;Osterhout & Holcomb, 1992). ...
Neuropsychological research investigating mental grammar
and lexicon has largely been based on the processing of regular
and irregular inflection. Past tense inflection of regular
verbs is assumed to be generated by a syntactic rule (e.g.,
show-ed), whereas irregular verbs consist of rather unsystematic
alternations (e.g., caught) represented as lexical entries.
Recent morphological accounts, however, hold that irregular
inflection is not entirely rule-free but relies on morphological
principles. These subregularities are computed by the syntactic
system. We tested this latter hypothesis by examining alternations
of irregular German verbs as well as pseudowords using
ERPs. Participants read series of irregular verb inflection including
present tense, past participle, and past tense forms embedded
in minimal syntactic contexts. The critical past tense form
was correct (e.g., er sang [he sang]) or incorrect by being either
partially consistent (e.g., *er sung [*he sung]) or inconsistent
(e.g., *er sing [*he sing]) with the proposed
morphological principles. Correspondingly, in a second experimental
block, pseudowords (e.g., tang/*tung/*ting) were presented.
ERPs for real words revealed a biphasic ERP pattern
consisting of a negativity and P600 for both incorrect forms
in comparison to the correct equivalents. Most interestingly,
the P600 amplitude for the incorrect forms was gradually modulated
by the type of anomaly with medium amplitude for consistent
past tense forms and largest amplitude for inconsistent
past tense forms. ERPs for pseudoword past tense forms
showed a similar gradual modulation of N400. The findings
support the assumption that irregular verbs are processed by
rule-based mechanisms because of subregularities of their past
tense inflection.
... Higher-level linguistic processes such as semantic retrieval and integration are indexed by the N400, which is elicited approximately 300-600 ms after the presentation of a semantically incongruous word in a sentence (Kutas & Hillyard, 1980; see Lau, Phillips, & Poeppel, 2008 for a review). Finally, a later P600 (a positive wave from approximately 600-1,000 ms) is elicited by syntactic anomalies and thus indexes grammatical processing (e.g., Friederici & Meyer, 2004). ...
Coderre reviews the cognitive and neural effects of bilingualism, beginning with an overview of how and where language is processed in the monolingual brain, and then extending this to multiple languages in the bilingual brain. Cross-linguistic effects of bilingualism are specifically discussed, including how a bilingual’s two languages can interact with each other during production and comprehension, and how these interactions can lead to facilitation or interference in processing. Coderre also discusses the cognitive advantages and disadvantages of bilingualism. In particular, bilinguals have a delay in lexical processing speed but have an increase in the efficiency of cognitive control.
Coderre concludes by discussing how the neuroscience of bilingualism could impact intercultural relations by improving second-language education. Examples are provided to demonstrate how previous findings could be used to change language instruction and how neuroscience could be used to insure appropriate learning goals are being met.
... Thus, the sentential meaning can be changed by inserting or deleting the corresponding morphological affixes following the verb-stem, or by attaching case markers following the nouns governed by the verb. These characteristics made their word order relatively free as in German [3]- [5], but the occurrence of error pattern regarding the syntactic violation generated by a morphological change of the function words was usually confined within one eojeol unit except for long-distance correspondency. This type of error forces the pattern of Korean syntactic violation to be distinct from many other languages as exemplified in gender or number disagreement, subagency constraint violation, gardenpath sentences in English [3], [6]- [10]. ...
The current study was conducted to examine the temporal and spatial activation sequences related to morphosyntactic, semantic and orthographic-lexical sentences, focusing on the morphological-orthographic and lexical-semantic deviation processes in Korean language processing. The Event-related Potentials (ERPs) of 15 healthy students were adopted to explore the processing of head-final critical words in a sentential plausibility task. Specifically, it was examined whether the ERP-pattern to orthographic-lexical violation might show linear precedence over other processes, or the presence of additivity across combined processing components. For the morphosyntactic violation, fronto-central LAN followed by P600 was found, while semantic violation elicited N400, as expected. Activation of P600 was distributed in the left frontal and central sites, while N400 appeared even in frontal sites other than the centro-parietal areas. Most importantly, the orthographic-lexical violation process revealed by earlier N2 with fronto-central activity was shown to be complexes of morphological and semantic functions from the same critical word. The present study suggests that there is a linear precedence over the morphological deviation and its lexical semantic processing based on the immediate possibility of lexical information, followed by sentential semantics. Finally, late syntactic integration processes were completed, showing different topographic activation in order of importance of ongoing sentential information.
... With regard to electrophysiological responses associated with argument structure violations, several studies have been undertaken in healthy and aphasic participants. In three studies with healthy German speakers (Friederici & Frisch, 2000;Frisch, Hahne, & Friederici, 2004;Friederici & Meyer, 2004), violations of the correct number of arguments in a sentence (e.g. *1l1e cousin dawdl d the violinist) elicited a biphasic N400-P600 pattern . ...
... Its estimated sources were mostly located in the left DLPFC (inferior frontal gyrus) and the right fusiform gyrus (see Fig. 4). While early studies described this ERP component as a marker of syntactic violation (Friederici and Meyer, 2004), recent studies challenged this interpretation by showing LPC in response to semantic violations or anomalies in the absence of any syntactic violation (Grieder et al., 2012;Hill et al., 2002). In addition, a LPC could be recorded in response to various manipulations of verbal semantics such as inversion of causality (e.g. ...
... Hemen osagairik garrantzitsuenetakoak aipatuko ditugu soilik, agian hain ezagunak ez diren ELAN (Early Left Anterior Negativity), MMN (Mismatch Negativity), LPN (Lexical Processing Negativity), FSN (Frequency Sensitive Negativity), CEN (Clause Ending Negativity)(cf.Rodríguez-Fornells et al., 2004), P300 (odd-balls effect delakoa) alde batera utzita.2 Ingeleserako ikus.Neville et al., 1991;Osterhout & Holcomb, 1992;Hagoort, 2003;Coulson & Kutas, 1998;Morris & Holcomb, 2005;Kaan, Harris, Gibson & Holcomb, 2000; nederlanderarako Hagoort, 2003;Hagoort, Brown & Groothusen, 1993;Van Herten, Kolk & Chwilla, 2005, alemanerako Friederici, 1995Friederici et al., 1996;Münte, Heinze, Matzke, Wieringa & Johannes, 1998;Hahne & Friederici, 1999;Friederici & Meyer, 2004, gaztelerarako Hinojosa, Martín-Loeches, Casado, Muñoz & Rubia, 2003De Diego Balaguer, 2003, italierarako De Vincenzi, Job, Di Matteo, Angrilli, Penolazzi, Ciccarelli & Vespignani, 2002, katalanerako Rodriguez-Fornells, Clahsen, Lleó, Zaake & Münte, 2001, japonierarako Nakagome, Kanno, Hagiwara, Nakajima, Itoh & Koshida, 2001, txinerarako Ye, Luo, Friederici & Zhou, 2006, suomierarako Paololahti, Leino, Jokela, Kopra & Paavilainen, 2005, eta azkenik euskararako Erdozia, 2004 ...
Laburpena Azken urteotako ikerketek agerian utzi dute hiztun elebidunen populazio batzuek ez dutela hizkuntza berdin prozesatzen. Izan ere, hizkuntza bat goiz edo berandu ikasteak berebiziko garrantzia du hizkuntza prozesatzerakoan. Lan honetan Gertaerei Loturiko Potentzialen metodoa erabiliz erakustiko dugunez, jaiotzezko euskaldunek eta euskara beranduxeago (3-4 urtetik aurrera) ikasi dutenek, nahiz eta gaitasun linguistiko bera izan, ez dute berdin jokatzen perpaus egituraren urraketen aurrean. Halaber, prozesamendu sintaktikoa oso goiz gertatzen dela frogatzen dugu eta hiztun goiztiarrengan lateralizatuago azaltzen dela euskaldun berantiarrengan baino.
... It emerges between 500-900ms and displays a centroparietal scalp distribution. The P600 component has been predominantly found for syntactic anomalies (see, e.g., Friederici et al. 1993, Friederici & Meyer 2004, and Rossi et al. 2005), but also for syntactically complex or ambiguous sentence structures (see Friederici et al. 2002, Friederici & Weissenborn 2007, as well as for semantic-pragmatic anomalies (see Regel et al. 2011). The P600 effect in response to syntactic manipulations has been interpreted as a reflection of controlled processes enganged in reanalysis or repair of sentences. ...
In the present study we investigate the relevance of the concept of underspecified inflection markers for the processing of language in the human brain. Underspecification is recognized as the main source of syncretism in many current morphological theories. However, relatively little is known about its cognitive status. In underspecification-based theories, a competition among morphological exponents arises systematically. In order to win such a competition, an inflection marker has to meet two requirements: COMPATIBILITY and SPECIFICITY. If underspecification is real, these two principles should also be an inherent part of the language processing system. One should therefore be able to observe separable effects for the violation of each of the criteria. We used the event-related potential (ERP) violation paradigm to test this hypothesis in the domain of strong adjective inflection in German. We expected differences in brain potentials between two incorrect conditions whenever they represented different types of violation (of compatibility and specificity). Our findings strongly support underspecification: an ERP-component related to morphosyntactic integration (viz. left anterior negativity; LAN) was modulated by violations of specificity versus compatibility. Furthermore, the neurophysiological evidence helps to distinguish between two kinds of morphological underspecification that have been proposed: it argues for maximal rather than minimal underspecification. Finally, the observed brain responses indicate increased processing demands for highly specific markers, which suggests that LAN effects may be sensitive not only to morphosyntactic violations but also to the degree of processing effort.
... The P600 component has been predominantly found for syntactic anomalies (see e.g. Friederici et al. 1993, Friederici & Meyer 2004, and Rossi et al. 2005), but also for syntactically complex or ambiguous sentence structures (see Friederici et al. 2002, Friederici & Weissenborn 2007, as well as for semantic-pragmatic anomalies (see Regel et al. 2011). The P600 effect in response to syntactic manipulations has been interpreted as a reflection of controlled processes enganged in reanalysis or repair of sentences. ...
In the present study we investigate the relevance of the concept of underspecified inflection markers for the processing of language in the human brain. Underspecification is recognized as the main source of syncretism in many current morphological theories. However, relatively little is known about its cognitive status. In underspecification-based theories, a competition among morphological exponents arises systematically. In order to win such a competition, an inflection marker has to meet two requirements: COMPATIBILITY and SPECIFICITY. If underspecification is real, these two principles should also be an inherent part of the language processing system. One should therefore be able to observe separable effects for the violation of each of the criteria. We used the event-related potential (ERP) violation paradigm to test this hypothesis in the domain of strong adjective inflection in German. We expected differences in brain potentials between two incorrect conditions whenever they represented different types of violation (of compatibility and specificity). Our findings strongly support underspecification: an ERP-component related to morphosyntactic integration (viz. left anterior negativity; LAN) was modulated by violations of specificity versus compatibility. Furthermore, the neurophysiological evidence helps to distinguish between two kinds of morphological underspecification that have been proposed: it argues for maximal rather than minimal underspecification. Finally, the observed brain responses indicate increased processing demands for highly specific markers, which suggests that LAN effects may be sensitive not only to morphosyntactic violations but also to the degree of processing effort.
... The P600 has been reported first for syntactically anomalous sentences, such as ''*The broker persuaded to sell the stock'', in which the verb-argument structure was violated [7]. Besides, the P600 appears to be sensitive to a variety of further syntactic violations, such as violations of phrase structure [8,9], subcategorization [10], and morphosyntactic constraints [11][12][13]. A P600 response has also been obtained for syntactically complex or ambiguous sentences [14][15][16], suggesting that this ERP component is sensitive to different syntactic subprocesses. ...
Research on language comprehension using event-related potentials (ERPs) reported distinct ERP components reliably related to the processing of semantic (N400) and syntactic information (P600). Recent ERP studies have challenged this well-defined distinction by showing P600 effects for semantic and pragmatic anomalies. So far, it is still unresolved whether the P600 reflects specific or rather common processes. The present study addresses this question by investigating ERPs in response to a syntactic and pragmatic (irony) manipulation, as well as a combined syntactic and pragmatic manipulation. For the syntactic condition, a morphosyntactic violation was applied, whereas for the pragmatic condition, such as "That is rich", either an ironic or literal interpretation was achieved, depending on the prior context. The ERPs at the critical word showed a LAN-P600 pattern for syntactically incorrect sentences relative to correct ones. For ironic compared to literal sentences, ERPs showed a P200 effect followed by a P600 component. In comparison of the syntax-related P600 to the irony-related P600, distributional differences were found. Moreover, for the P600 time window (i.e., 500-900 ms), different changes in theta power between the syntax and pragmatics effects were found, suggesting that different patterns of neural activity contributed to each respective effect. Thus, both late positivities seem to be differently sensitive to these two types of linguistic information, and might reflect distinct neurocognitive processes, such as reanalysis of the sentence structure versus pragmatic reanalysis.
... In contrast to our understanding of how mathematical notations are processed, the comprehension of sentences of natural language is comparatively well understood. In particular, the important role of syntax in relation PARSING OF ALGEBRAIC EXPRESSIONS 287 to natural language has been recognised for many decades now, and has led to the use of transformational grammars to understand how humans parse natural language sentences (for example, see Borsley, 1999;Frederici & Meyer, 2004;Haskell & MacDonald, 2005). Such grammars use phrase structure rules to reveal the structure of a sentence, enabling it to be broken up into constituents such as noun and verb phrases. ...
The present study investigates how experienced users of mathematics parse algebraic expressions. The main issues examined are the order in which the symbols in an expression are scanned and the duration of fixation. Two experiments tracked the order in which the symbols of an expression were scanned. The results were analysed using Markov Chain models of the scanpath data and provided strong support for the hypothesised scanning order: a left-to-right, top-to-bottom syntax-based scanning order. Length of fixation was also analysed in the first experiment. When reading text, readers pause significantly longer at the end of clauses and sentences. A similar pattern was found for mathematical expressions: Symbols at the end of a phrasal constituent were fixated upon for significantly longer than symbols at the start or middle of the phrasal constituent. These results suggest that the parsing of algebraic expressions has marked similarities with the way in which sentences of natural language are processed and reinforces the importance of syntax in their comprehension.
The relationship between syntactic, semantic, and conceptual processes in language comprehension is a central question to the neurobiology of language. Several studies have suggested that conceptual combination in particular can be localized to the left anterior temporal lobe (LATL), while syntactic processes are more often associated with the posterior temporal lobe or inferior frontal gyrus. However, LATL activity can also correlate with syntactic computations, particularly in narrative comprehension. Here we investigated the degree to which LATL conceptual combination is dependent on syntax, specifically asking whether rapid (∼200 ms) magnetoencephalography effects of conceptual combination in the LATL can occur in the absence of licit syntactic phrase closure and in the absence of a semantically plausible output for the composition. We find that such effects do occur: LATL effects of conceptual combination were observed even when there was no syntactic phrase closure or plausible meaning. But syntactic closure did have an additive effect such that LATL signals were the highest for expressions that composed both conceptually and syntactically. Our findings conform to an account in which LATL conceptual composition is influenced by local syntactic composition but is also able to operate without it.
Resumo: A medição da ativação cerebral por meio da técnica de potenciais relacionados a eventos (ERP) tem sido valiosa para lançar luz sobre diversas cognições humanas. A linguagem é uma das cognições que têm sido estudadas com essa técnica de grande resolução temporal entre o estímulo apresentado e a ativação observada decorrente desse estímulo. A área de aquisição da linguagem tem se beneficiado especialmente dessa técnica, dado que é possível investigar relações entre dados linguísticos e a ativação cerebral sem a necessidade de uma resposta explícita, como apertar um botão ou apontar para uma imagem. O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar o estado da arte sobre o processamento de frases em crianças utilizando a técnica de ERP. Palavras-chave: ERP/EEG; processamento de frases; aquisição da linguagem; N400; P600. Abstract: The measurement of brain activation through the technique of event related potentials (ERP) has been valuable in shedding light on various human cognitions. Language is one of those cognitions that has been studied with this technique, which allows for more accurate temporal resolution between the stimulus presented and the time in which we observe an activation resulting from this stimulus. The area of language acquisition has especially benefited from this technique since it
Verb-argument relation is a very important aspect of syntax-semantics interaction in sentence processing. Previous ERP (event related potentials) studies in this field concentrated on the relation between the verb and its core arguments. The present study aims to reveal the ERP pattern of Chinese applied object structures (AOSs), in which a peripheral argument is promoted to occupy the position of the patient object, as compared with the patient object structures (POSs). The ERP data were collected when participants were asked to perform acceptability judgments about Chinese phrases. The result shows that, similar to the previous studies of number-of-argument violations, Chinese AOSs show a bilaterally distributed N400 effect. But different from all the previous studies of verb-argument relations, Chinese AOSs demonstrate a sustained anterior positivity (SAP). This SAP, which is very rare in the studies related to complexity of argument structure operation, reflects the integration difficulty of the newly promoted arguments and the progressive nature of well-formedness checking in the processing of Chinese AOSs which is in accordance with the metonymic mechanism of non-patient objects in the relevant cognitive study. It shows that, in Chinese, which is a paratactic language, semantics (thematic roles) plays a more important role in the syntax-semantics interface than that in hypotactic languages.
This study investigated the processing of inflectional morphology by registrating event-related brain potentials (ERPs) during sentence reading. In particular, we examined nouns combined with affixes that have distinct structural characteristics as proposed by morphological theory. Affixes were either complex consisting of functionally distinguishable subparts as occurring for German plural morphology, or simple consisting of one part only. To test possible differences in processing these affixes we compared grammatical nouns [e.g., Kartons (cartons)] to ungrammatical ones (e.g., *Kartonen) in two different syntactic contexts represented by a complex, or simple affix. The ERPs showed that ungrammatical nouns consisting of complex affixes elicited a left anterior negativity (LAN) reflecting enhanced morphosyntactic processing, which was absent for equivalent nouns consisting of simple affixes. This finding suggests that inflected words are decomposed dependent on the affix structure, whereby the affixes themselves seem to consist of morphological subparts in accordance with current morphological theories (Müller, 2007; Noyer, 1992). Moreover, ungrammatical nouns elicited early (reduced P200) and late (P600) ERP components relative to their grammatical equivalents, which implies an engagement of syntactic processes presumably based on intially enhanced pre-lexical processing of these irregularized nouns. The findings are discussed with respect to theoretical and neuropsychological accounts to inflectional morphology.
See Preface and other Front Matter here: https://assets.cambridge.org/97811070/84902/frontmatter/9781107084902_frontmatter.pdf
A medição da ativação cerebral por meio da técnica de potenciais relacionados a eventos (ERP) tem sido valiosa para lançar luz sobre diversas cognições humanas. A linguagem é uma das cognições que têm sido estudadas com essa técnica de grande resolução temporal entre o estímulo apresentado e a ativação observada decorrente desse estímulo. A área de aquisição da linguagem tem se beneficiado especialmente dessa técnica, dado que é possível investigar relações entre dados linguísticos e a ativação cerebral sem a necessidade de uma resposta explícita, como apertar um botão ou apontar para uma imagem. O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar o estado da arte sobre o processamento de frases em crianças utilizando a técnica de ERP.
In this chapter, we propose to put the previously obtained results (theoretical elaboration and adjacent theses) to the test of the neurosciences, in particular, to the test of electroencephalographic (henceforth EEG) observation.
Although a number of studies have investigated the incongruity-detection and resolution process in humor comprehension, it is difficult to functionally and anatomically dissociate these processes. We used event-related potentials (ERP) and standardized low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography analysis (sLORETA) to examine the time course and localization of brain activity during incongruity detection and resolution. We used the same materials as in our previous fMRI study. Eighteen participants read funny and unfunny scenarios and judged whether the target sentence was funny or not. Results indicated that ERPs elicited by a funny punch line showed a P2 component followed by a P600 component over the centro-parietal electrode sites. Our sLORETA analysis of the P2 ERPs revealed a stronger activation for the funny vs. unfunny condition in the superior frontal gyrus (SFG) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). For the P600 ERPs, the funny punch line elicited greater activation in the temporal-parietal regions. These results indicate that incongruity-detection processes activate the SFG and mPFC in the P2 time window, while incongruity-resolution processes generate activation at the temporal-parietal regions in the P600 time window. These results provide the evidence that verbal humor comprehension is processed in steps which start with the incongruity detection in the early P2 time window and followed by a P600 component reflecting incongruity resolution.
Background:
Disturbances in thought, speech, and linguistic processing are frequently observed in bipolar manic patients, but the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms are not well understood. P600 is a distinct, positive event-related potential component elicited by syntactic violations. Using the P600 ERP, we examined neural processing of syntactic language comprehension in patients with bipolar mania compared to patients with schizophrenia and healthy people.
Method:
P600s were recorded from 21 manic patients with bipolar disorder, 26 patients with schizophrenia, and 29 healthy subjects during the presentation of 120 auditory sentences with syntactic violations or non-violations. Subjects were asked to judge whether each sentence was correct or incorrect.
Results:
Patients with mania and schizophrenia had significantly smaller P600 amplitudes associated with syntactic violations compared with healthy subjects. There was no difference in P600 amplitude between patient groups. For behavioral performance, patients with schizophrenia had significantly less accurate rates and longer reaction times compared with healthy subjects, whereas manic patients exhibited no significant differences in accuracy and only showed increased reaction times in comparison with healthy subjects.
Limitations:
Psychotropic drug usage and small sample size.
Conclusion:
Patients with bipolar mania have reduced P600 amplitude, comparable to patients with schizophrenia. Our findings may represent the first neurophysiological evidence of abnormal syntactic linguistic processing in bipolar mania.
Theoretical considerations and diverse empirical data from clinical, psycholinguistic, and developmental studies suggest that language comprehension processes are decomposable into separate subsystems, including distinct systems for semantic and grammatical processing. Here we report that event-related potentials (ERPs) to syntactically well-formed but semantically anomalous sentences produced a pattern of brain activity that is distinct in timing and distribution from the patterns elicited by syntactically deviant sentences, and further, that different types of syntactic deviance produced distinct ERP patterns. Forty right-handed young adults read sentences presented at 2 words/sec while ERPs were recorded from over several positions between and within the hemispheres. Half of the sentences were semantically and grammatically acceptable and were controls for the remainder, which contained sentence medial words that violated (1) semantic expectations, (2) phrase structure rules, or (3) WH-movement constraints on Specificity and (4) Subjacency. As in prior research, the semantic anomalies produced a negative potential, N400, that was bilaterally distributed and was largest over posterior regions. The phrase structure violations enhanced the N125 response over anterior regions of the left hemisphere, and elicited a negative response (300-500 msec) over temporal and parietal regions of the left hemisphere. Violations of Specificity constraints produced a slow negative potential, evident by 125 msec, that was also largest over anterior regions of the left hemisphere. Violations of Subjacency constraints elicited a broadly and symmetrically distributed positivity that onset around 200 msec. The distinct timing and distribution of these effects provide biological support for theories that distinguish between these types of grammatical rules and constraints and more generally for the proposal that semantic and grammatical processes are distinct subsystems within the language faculty.
Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 13 scalp electrodes while subjects listened to sentences containing syntactic ambiguities. Words that were inconsistent with the “preferred” sentence structure elicited a positive-going wave (the P600 effect), similar to that elicited by such words during reading (Osterhout & Holcomb, 1992). These results suggest that (1) ERPs recorded during the comprehension of spoken sentences are sensitive to the syntactic anomaly engendered by disambiguating material following erroneous analysis of a syntactically ambiguous string (the “garden-path” effect), (2) the parsing strategies employed during sentence comprehension are (in some circumstances) constant across modalities, and (3) syntactic analysis of spoken sentences is temporally close to the acoustic input.
Event-related potentials were recorded from 13 scalp locations while participants read sentences containing a syntactic ambiguity. In Experiment 1, syntactically disambiguating words that were inconsistent with the "favored" syntactic analysis elicited a positive-going brain potential (P600). Experiment 2 examined whether syntactic ambiguities are resolved by application of a phrase-structure-based minimal attachment principle or by word-specific subcategorization information. P600 amplitude was a function of subcategorization biases rather than syntactic complexity. These findings indicate that such biases exist and can influence the parser under certain conditions and that P600 amplitude is a function of the perceived syntactic well-formedness of the sentence.
The present study investigated different aspects of auditory language comprehension. The sentences which were presented as connected speech were either correct or incorrect including a semantic error (selectional restriction), a morphological error (verb inflection), or a syntactic error (phrase structure). After each sentence, a probe word was presented auditorily, and subjects had to decide whether this word was part of the preceding sentence or not. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 7 scalp electrodes. The ERPs evoked by incorrect sentences differed significantly from the correct ones as a function of error type. Semantic anomalies evoked a 'classical' N400 pattern. Morphological errors elicited a pronounced negativity between 300 and 600 ms followed by a late positivity. Syntactic errors, in contrast, evoked an early negativity peaking around 180 ms followed by a negativity around 400 ms. The early negativity was only significant over the left anterior electrode. The present data demonstrate that linguistic errors of different categories evoke different ERP patterns. They indicate that with using connected speech as input, different aspects of language comprehension processes cannot only be described with respect to their temporal structure, but eventually also with respect to possible brain systems subserving these processes.
Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from participants listening to or reading sentences that were correct, contained a violation of the required syntactic category, or contained a syntactic-category ambiguity. When sentences were presented auditorily (Experiment 1), there was an early left anterior negativity for syntactic-category violations, but not for syntactic-category ambiguities. Both anomaly types elicited a late centroparietally distributed positivity. When sentences were presented visually word by word (Experiment 2), again an early left anterior negativity was found only for syntactic-category violations, and both types of anomalies elicited a late positivity. The combined data are taken to be consistent with a 2-stage model of parsing, including a 1st stage, during which an initial phrase structure is built and a 2nd stage, during which thematic role assignment and, if necessary, reanalysis takes place. Disruptions to the 1st stage of syntactic parsing appear to be correlated with an early left anterior negativity, whereas disruptions to the 2nd stage might be correlated with a late posterior distributed positivity.
The goal of this study is to reintegrate the theory of generative grammar into the cognitive sciences. Generative grammar was right to focus on the child's acquisition of language as its central problem, leading to the hypothesis of an innate Universal Grammar. However, generative grammar was mistaken in assuming that the syntactic component is the sole course of combinatoriality, and that everything else is "interpretive." The proper approach is a parallel architecture, in which phonology, syntax, and semantics are autonomous generative systems linked by interface components. The parallel architecture leads to an integration within linguistics, and to a far better integration with the rest of cognitive neuroscience. It fits naturally into the larger architecture of the mind/brain and permits a properly mentalistic theory of semantics. It results in a view of linguistic performance in which the rules of grammar are directly involved in processing. Finally, it leads to a natural account of the incremental evolution of the language capacity.
Functional dissociations within the neural basis of auditory sentence processing are difficult to specify because phonological, syntactic and semantic information are all involved when sentences are perceived. In this review I argue that sentence processing is supported by a temporo-frontal network. Within this network, temporal regions subserve aspects of identification and frontal regions the building of syntactic and semantic relations. Temporal analyses of brain activation within this network support syntax-first models because they reveal that building of syntactic structure precedes semantic processes and that these interact only during a later stage.
THE effect of visual contrast on sentence reading was investigated using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Under the low contrast condition semantic integration as reflected in the N400 ERP component was delayed to some degree. The left anterior negativity (LAN) reflecting initial syntactic processes, in contrast, seemed to change its characteristics as a function of visual input. In the high contrast condition the LAN preceded the P200 component whereas in the low contrast condition it was present after this component. These ERP-data from word-by-word sentence reading together with prior results from sentence listening suggest that the physical characteristics of the input must fall within a certain optimal range to guarantee ERP-effects of fast initial syntactic processes.
In psycholinguistic research, there has been considerable interest in understanding the interactions of difFerent types of linguistic information during language processing. For example, does syntactic information interact with semantic or pragmatic information at an early stage of language processing, or only at later stages in order to resolve ambiguities of language? Developing reliable measures of language processes such as syntax and semantics is important to address many of these theoretical issues in psycholinguistics. In the present study, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from healthy young subjects while they read pairs of words presented one word at a time. The ERPs for the second word of each pair were compared as a function of whether the preceding word was or was not (1) semantically related (i.e., synonyms; semantic condition) or (2) grammatically correct (syntactic condition). In the semantic condition the ERPs obtained to words preceded by nonsemantically related words elicited an N400 component that was maximal over centroparietal scalp regions. In contrast, in the syntactic condition the ERPs obtained to words preceded by grammatically incorrect articles or pronouns yielded a negativity with a later onset, and a frontopolar, left hemisphere scalp maximum. This replicates our previous findings of a syntactic negativity in a word pair design that was performed in the German language. Further, the present data provide scalp distributional information, which suggests that the syntactic negativity represents brain processes that are dissociable from the centroparietal N400 component. Thus, these findings provide strong evidence for a separate negative polarity ERP component that indexes syntactic aspects of language processing.
Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 13 scalp electrodes while subjects read sentences containing syntactic ambiguities. Words which were inconsitent with the “preferred” sentence structure elicited a brain potential (P600) quite distinct from the potential previously observed following contextually inappropriate words (N400). Furthermore, final words in sentences typically judged to be unacceptable elicited an N400-like effect, relative to final words in sentences typically judged to be acceptable. These findings suggest that ERPs are sensitive to syntactic anomaly, including anomaly engendered by disambiguating material following erroneous analysis of a syntactically ambiguous string (the “garden path” effect). We evaluate the speculation that the P600 and N400 effects are elicited as a function of anomaly type (syntactic and semantic, respectively).
The interrelation between syntactic analysis of agreement and semantic processing was examined by recording eye movements and event-related potentials. Subject-predicate gender agreement was manipulated within Hebrew sentences. The subject was either animate or inanimate, with conceptual gender denoted by the subject's morphological structure. First-pass reading time was found to be longer for incongruent predicates than of congruent predicates but only if the predicate's gender was morphologically marked. Furthermore, this effect was larger in the animate than in the inanimate condition. Second-pass reading time was also prolonged by gender incongruity but this effect was not affected by either markedness or animacy. Gender incongruity enhanced the amplitude of an early negative potential (ostensibly ELAN), of a later negative potential (N400), and of a positive potential (P600). Like first-pass reading time, the congruity effect on the syntactically modulated P600 was significant only for marked predicates, but it did not interact with animacy. In contrast, the congruity effect on the semantically modulated N400 was significant only in the animate condition. The N400 was not affected by markedness. The congruity effect on the early negativity did not interact with either animacy or markedness. The interaction between semantic and syntactic processing and its time course are discussed within the framework set by interactive, constraint-based models for online sentence processing.
Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 13 scalp electrodes while subjects read sentences, some of which contained violations of number or gender agreement. Subjects judged the acceptability of sentences in Experiments 1 and 2 and passively read sentences in Experiment 3. In Experiment 1, violations of subject-verb number, reflexive-antecedent number, and reflexive-antecedent gender agreement elicited a widely distributed positive-going wave (P600). Subject-verb agreement violations also elicited a left-hemisphere negativity. In Experiment 2, personal pronouns that mismatched in gender with the subject noun elicited a P600, but only when subjects judged such sentences to be unacceptable. Semantically anomalous words elicited an enhanced N400 component. In Experiment 3, subject-verb number disagreement elicited a P600 and semantic anomalies elicited an enhanced N400. ERPs to reflexive-antecedent agreement violations did not differ from those to controls. We evaluate the speculation that agreement between sentence constituents reflects syntactic constraints rather than semantic or discourse factors.
This paper presents event-related brain potential (ERP) data from an experiment on syntactic processing. Subjects read individual sentences containing one of three different kinds of violations of the syntactic constraints of Dutch. The ERP results provide evidence for M electrophysiological response to syntactic processing that is qualitatively different from established ERP responses to semantic processing. We refer to this electro-physiological manifestation of parsing as the Syntactic Positive Shift (SPS). The SPS was observed in an experiment in which no task demands, other than to read the input, were imposed on the subjects. The pattern of responses to the different kinds of syntactic violations suggests that the SPS indicates the impossibility for the parser to assign the preferred structure to an incoming string of words, irrespective of the specific syntactic nature of this preferred structure. The implications of these findings for further research on parsing are discussed.
Three experiments concerning the processing of syntactic and semantic violations were conducted. Event related potentials (ERPs) showed that semantic violations elicited an N400 response, whereas syntactic violations elicited two early negativities (150 and 350 ms) and a P600 response. No interaction between the semantic and early syntactic ERP effects was found sentence complexity and violation probability (25% vs 75%) affected only the P600 and not the early negativities. The probability effect was taken as evidence that the P600 resembles the P3B, The temporal order of word processing in a sentence as suggested by the data was such that a more automatic syntactic analysis was performed (earlier syntactic-related negativities) in parallel with a semantic analysis 9N400), after which a syntactic reanalysis was performed (P600). A reanalysis interpretation of the P600 could explain why the extent of the reanalysis differed with syntactic complexity and probability of ungrammaticality.
The processing of semantic and structural information concerning the relation between a verb and its arguments is investigated in German in two experiments: In Experiment 1 the verb precedes all its arguments, whereas in Experiment 2 all arguments precede the verb. In both experiments, participants read sentences containing a semantic violation concerning the thematic role, a violation of the number of arguments, or a violation of the grammatical type of the argument (direct versus indirect object) indicated by case marking. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded during sentence reading. ERPs displayed different patterns for each of the violation types in the two experiments. The specific ERP patterns found for the different violation types indicate that the processes concerning the thematic role violation are primarily semantic in nature and that those concerning the grammatical type of argument are purely syntactic. Interestingly, processes concerning the number of arguments seem to trigger semantic processes followed by syntactic processes. The combined findings from the two experiments suggest that the parser uses verb-specific information to build up syntactic and thematic structures against which incoming arguments are checked and that argument-specific information can be used to build up syntactic and thematic structures against which the incoming verb has to be checked to allow lexical integration.
In a sentence reading task, words that occurred out of context were associated with specific types of event-related brain
potentials. Words that were physically aberrant (larger than normal) elecited a late positive series of potentials, whereas
semantically inappropriate words elicited a late negative wave (N400). The N400 wave may be an electrophysiological sign of
the "reprocessing" of semantically anomalous information.
In this study we examined the properties of the processes involved in the structural analysis of sentences using event-related brain potential measures (ERP). Previous research had shown two ERP components to correlate with phrase structure violations: an early left anterior negativity (ELAN), which is assumed to reflect first-pass parsing processes, and a late parietally distributed positivity (P600), assumed to reflect second-pass parsing processes. We hypothesized that the first-pass parsing processes are highly automatic, whereas second-pass parsing processes are more controlled. To test this hypothesis we varied the proportion of correct sentences and sentences containing phrase structure violations with incorrect sentences being either of a low (20% violation) or a high (80% violation) proportion. Results showed that the early left anterior negativity was elicited and equally pronounced under both proportion conditions. By contrast, the late positivity was elicited for a low proportion of incorrect sentences only. This data pattern suggests that first-pass parsing processes are automatic, whereas second-pass parsing processes are under participants' strategic control.
The effect of visual contrast on sentence reading was investigated using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Under the low contrast condition semantic integration as reflected in the N400 ERP component was delayed to some degree. The left anterior negativity (LAN) reflecting initial syntactic processes, in contrast, seemed to change its characteristics as a function of visual input. In the high contrast condition the LAN preceded the P200 component whereas in the low contrast condition it was present after this component. These ERP-data from word-by-word sentence reading together with prior results from sentence listening suggest that the physical characteristics of the input must fall within a certain optimal range to guarantee ERP-effects of fast initial syntactic processes.
The cortical network subserving language processing is likely to exhibit a high spatial and temporal complexity. Studies using brain imaging methods, like fMRI or PET, succeeded in identifying a number of brain structures that seem to contribute to the processing of syntactic structures, while their dynamic interaction remains unclear due to the low temporal resolution of the methods. On the other hand, ERP studies have revealed a great deal of the temporal dimension of language processing without being able to provide more than very coarse information on the localisation of the underlying generators. MEG has a temporal resolution similar to EEG combined with a better spatial resolution. In this paper, Brain Surface Current Density (BSCD) mapping in a standard brain model was used to identify statistically significant differences between the activity of certain brain regions due to syntactically correct and incorrect auditory language input. The results show that the activity in the first 600 ms after violation onset is mainly concentrated in the temporal cortex and the adjacent frontal and parietal areas of both hemispheres. The statistical analysis reveals significantly different activity mainly in both frontal and temporal cortices. For longer latencies above 250 ms, the differential activity is more prominent in the right hemisphere. These findings confirm other recent results that suggest right hemisphere involvement in auditory language processing. One interpretation might be that right hemisphere regions play an important role in repair and re-analysis processes in order to free the specialised left hemisphere language areas for processing further input.
The physical energy that we refer to as a word, whether in isolation or embedded in sentences, takes its meaning from the knowledge stored in our brains through a lifetime of experience. Much empirical evidence indicates that, although this knowledge can be used fairly flexibly, it is functionally organized in 'semantic memory' along a number of dimensions, including similarity and association. Here, we review recent findings using an electrophysiological brain component, the N400, that reveal the nature and timing of semantic memory use during language comprehension. These findings show that the organization of semantic memory has an inherent impact on sentence processing. The left hemisphere, in particular, seems to capitalize on the organization of semantic memory to pre-activate the meaning of forthcoming words, even if this strategy fails at times. In addition, these electrophysiological results support a view of memory in which world knowledge is distributed across multiple, plastic-yet-structured, largely modality-specific processing areas, and in which meaning is an emergent, temporally extended process, influenced by experience, context, and the nature of the brain itself.
Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we present evidence that the current interpretation of the N400 component must be extended. This component is elicited in incorrect German sentences with two grammatical subjects, thereby showing its sensitivity to thematic relations between arguments in a sentence (who is doing what to whom). Such a violation only elicits an N400 when both arguments are animate but not when one of them is animate and the other inanimate, thus showing that the brain uses animacy information to overcome interpretation problems due to thematic competition. Structures with two subjects additionally elicit a P600 component which occurs independently of the animacy variation. Thus, animacy information does not appear to influence the syntactic processing problems resulting from such violations.
The present experiment investigated cortical responses of native Italian subjects during reading of short sentences including semantic or morphosyntactic violations. Given the specificity of the Italian language in which the sequencing of words is relatively more free than in English or other languages, we investigated whether syntactic and semantic violations were able to elicit event-related potential (ERP) components similar to those found in other languages. Cortical potentials evoked by the anomalous target word were recorded at frontal, central and parietal electrodes. Results showed that, in Italian, semantic anomaly elicited a negative wave (N400) in the 400-500 ms time-window and syntactic error evoked a slower positive wave (P600) in the 500-700 ms time-window. Syntactic error also evoked a significant left anterior negativity in the 350-450 ms time-window, supporting the view that syntactic processes precedes semantic analysis. Thus, Italian language, notwithstanding its specificity, shows ERPs responses to semantic and syntactic violations, with effects, scalp distribution and latency similar to those found in German, Dutch and English. Results point to a cross-linguistic consistency of the semantic and syntactic ERP components associated with the detection of linguistic anomalies.
Scalp distributions of event-related potentials: an ambiguity associated with analysis of variance models
- McCarthy