Recent evidence suggests that language processing is well-adapted to noise in the input (e.g., spelling or speech errors, misreading or mishearing) and that comprehenders readily correct the input via rational inference over possible intended sentences given probable noise corruptions. In the current study, we probed the processing of noisy linguistic input, asking whether well-studied ERP components may serve as useful indices of this inferential process. In particular, we examined sentences where semantic violations could be attributed to noise-for example, in "The storyteller could turn any incident into an amusing antidote", where the implausible word "antidote" is orthographically and phonologically close to the intended "anecdote". We found that the processing of such sentences-where the probability that the message was corrupted by noise exceeds the probability that it was produced intentionally and perceived accurately-was associated with a reduced (less negative) N400 effect and an increased P600 effect, compared to semantic violations which are unlikely to be attributed to noise ("The storyteller could turn any incident into an amusing hearse"). Further, the magnitudes of these ERP effects were correlated with the probability that the comprehender retrieved a plausible alternative. This work thus adds to the growing body of literature that suggests that many aspects of language processing are optimized for dealing with noise in the input, and opens the door to electrophysiologic investigations of the computations that support the processing of imperfect input.
The Pirahã language has been at the center of recent debates in linguistics, in large part because it is claimed not to exhibit recursion, a purported universal of human language. Here, we present an analysis of a novel corpus of natural Pirahã speech that was originally collected by Dan Everett and Steve Sheldon. We make the corpus freely available for further research. In the corpus, Pirahã sentences have been shallowly parsed and given morpheme-aligned English translations. We use the corpus to investigate the formal complexity of Pirahã syntax by searching for evidence of syntactic embedding. In particular, we search for sentences which could be analyzed as containing center-embedding, sentential complements, adverbials, complementizers, embedded possessors, conjunction or disjunction. We do not find unambiguous evidence for recursive embedding of sentences or noun phrases in the corpus. We find that the corpus is plausibly consistent with an analysis of Pirahã as a regular language, although this is not the only plausible analysis.
The ability to efficiently process presuppositions, which contain information that the speaker believes to be in the background to the conversation, is essential for effective communication. To get a deeper understanding of the nature and the time-course of temporal presupposition processing, we examined event-related potential (ERPs) evoked by the word again in two types of sentence contexts. The word again was presented in contexts that supported a presupposition (e.g., Jake had tipped a maid at the hotel once before. Today he tipped a maid at the hotel again…) or violated it (e.g., Jake had never tipped a maid at the hotel before. Today he tipped a maid at the hotel again…). The presupposition violation was associated with increased amplitudes of the P3b/P600 but not the N400 component. We argue for the centrality of the P3b/P600 component for presupposition processing. These findings demonstrate rapid integration of lexical presuppositions with contextual knowledge.Keywords: temporal presupposition, ERPs, P3b/ P600, N400, presupposition violation 3 IntroductionNatural language is highly adaptive: the very same message can be used to convey many distinct meanings depending on the communicative context. This context-sensitivity is one of the defining characteristics of language. One important way in which communicative contexts differ is with respect to what information is already shared among the participants in a conversation. Consider the use of the definite determiner the in sentence (1).(1) Mary saw the tiger.Which tiger Mary saw is highly context-dependent. For example, if we are at a zoo, then this sentence will likely convey that Mary saw the tiger at the zoo. In contrast, if a tiger is on the loose in town, then the sentence will likely convey that Mary saw that tiger.Critically, however, the determiner the in (1) carries the presupposition that there exists a unique tiger in the context. If there is more than one salient tiger in the context, or no tigers at all, then the sentence cannot be felicitously used, and its presupposition will have been violated. More generally, presuppositions impose requirements on the conversational context. If a sentence carries a presupposition, then it will only be felicitous if the context satisfies that presupposition (Caffi, 2006;Heim, 1983;1992; Kamp, 2008; Katz, 1973;Simons, 2006; Van Der Sandt, 1992).Presuppositions are "triggered" by a distinct class of words, referred to as presupposition triggers. In English, the words the, stop, and again, among others, act as presupposition triggers. These words signal the presence of shared background knowledge. For example, in (2), the trigger word stop asserts that the action of smoking was terminated at a certain time point and presupposes that the action has taken place 4 before that point.(2) John stopped smoking last year.In (3), the sentence asserts that the action of tipping occurred at certain time point, and the word again presupposes that this action was also performed on a previous occasion.(3) Jake t...
Models that aim to explain electrophysiological responses to linguistic processing (e.g., the N400 and P600 components) typically assume that the representation of linguistic input is error-free. Recent evidence suggests that language processing mechanisms are well-adapted to input corrupted by noise (e.g., speech errors, mishearing) and readily correct for it via rational inference over possible intended sentences and probable noise corruptions. We hypothesize that a P600 ensues whenever the probability that the message was corrupted by noise exceeds the probability that it was produced intentionally and perceived accurately. We show that semantic violations that are attributable to noise-for example, in "The storyteller could turn any incident into an amusing antidote", the implausible word "antidote" is orthographically and phonologically close to the intended "anecdote"-elicit a P600 (rather than N400). Further, the magnitude of this P600 is shown to relate to the probability that the comprehender will retrieve a plausible alternative.
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