In spoken language, pitch accent can mark certain information as focus, whereby more attentional resources are allocated to the focused information. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, this study examined whether pitch accent, used for marking focus, recruited general attention networks during sentence comprehension. In a language task, we independently manipulated the prosody and semantic/pragmatic congruence of sentences. We found that semantic/pragmatic processing affected bilateral inferior and middle frontal gyrus. The prosody manipulation showed bilateral involvement of the superior/inferior parietal cortex, superior and middle temporal cortex, as well as inferior, middle, and posterior parts of the frontal cortex. We compared these regions with attention networks localized in an auditory spatial attention task. Both tasks activated bilateral superior/inferior parietal cortex, superior temporal cortex, and left precentral cortex. Furthermore, an interaction between prosody and congruence was observed in bilateral inferior parietal regions: for incongruent sentences, but not for congruent ones, there was a larger activation if the incongruent word carried a pitch accent, than if it did not. The common activations between the language task and the spatial attention task demonstrate that pitch accent activates a domain general attention network, which is sensitive to semantic/pragmatic aspects of language. Therefore, attention and language comprehension are highly interactive.

Object-initial clauses (OCs) are associated with more processing difficulties than subject-initial clauses (SCs) in a number of languages (e.g. English, German and Finnish), but a supportive context can reduce or neutralize the difference between SCs and OCs with respect to reading times. Still, it is unresolved how context can affect the comprehension of OCs. In the present self-paced reading study of Danish, we therefore investigated both reading times, comprehension accuracy and response times for OCs and SCs. In line with previous studies on word order processing, OCs in an unsupportive context showed longer reading times than SCs, longer response times and a comprehension accuracy as poor as chance level. A manipulation of context showed no effect of reading time, but a supportive context had a stronger facilitating effect on comprehension (response accuracy and response time) for OCs than for SCs.

a b s t r a c tIn languages that have subject-before-object as their canonical word order, e.g. German, English and Danish, behavioral experiments have shown more processing difficulties for object-initial clauses (OCs) than for subject-initial clauses (SCs). For processing of OCs in such languages, neuroimaging experiments have shown more activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (L-IFG) compared to SCs. The increased activation in L-IFG has been explained in terms of syntactic transformation demands, increased argument hierarchization demands, and increased load on working memory. Behavioral findings have indicated that context may facilitate syntactic processing, but it has not been investigated whether a supportive context can decrease the activity in L-IFG. With L-IFG as a region of interest (ROI), the present fMRI study of 21 Danish participants investigated how a supportive linguistic context would affect the processing of Danish main clauses with either an initial subject or an initial object. We found more activity in BA 44, BA 45 and BA 47 for OCs compared to SCs. The processing of Danish OCs is thereby seen to elicit effects in L-IFG comparable to previously investigated languages. The context manipulation showed reduced activity in BA 47 for SCs and OCs occurring after a supportive linguistic context, suggesting less pragmatic Journal of Neurolinguistics 26 (2013) 73-88 processing difficulties for sentence processing in a supportive context. Outside the ROI, the lack of context affected several regions in both the frontal, temporal and parietal lobes.

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