Cues, quantification, and agreement in language comprehension

Tanner, Darren; Bulkes, Nyssa

doi:10.3758/s13423-015-0850-3

Cited by 21 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…In cases where these predictions are met, no processing difficulty is predicted, and brain responses should not vary based on the morphological complexity of the target word. The newly encountered word can easily be integrated into the predicted linguistic representation, leading to a lack of P600 effects (see also [ 42 ]). However, in cases where bottom-up detected words mismatch with features generated by the prediction, the reader searches through his or her representation of the sentence in working memory to find the entity acting as the grammatical “controller” of verb morphology (in this case, the verb were ) [ 8 , 43 – 52 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Grammaticality and Morphological Complexity on the P600 Event-Related Potential Component

et al. 2015

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We investigated interactions between morphological complexity and grammaticality on electrophysiological markers of grammatical processing during reading. Our goal was to determine whether morphological complexity and stimulus grammaticality have independent or additive effects on the P600 event-related potential component. Participants read sentences that were either well-formed or grammatically ill-formed, in which the critical word was either morphologically simple or complex. Results revealed no effects of complexity for well-formed stimuli, but the P600 amplitude was significantly larger for morphologically complex ungrammatical stimuli than for morphologically simple ungrammatical stimuli. These findings suggest that some previous work may have inadequately characterized factors related to reanalysis during morphosyntactic processing. Our results show that morphological complexity by itself does not elicit P600 effects. However, in ungrammatical circumstances, overt morphology provides a more robust and reliable cue to morphosyntactic relationships than null affixation.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Grammaticality and Morphological Complexity on the P600 Event-Related Potential Component

et al. 2015

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“…A number of studies have reported that syntactically and morphosyntactically anomalous words elicit a P600 effect (e.g., Friederici, Hahne, & Mecklinger, ; Hagoort, Brown, & Groothusen, ; Hagoort, Wassenaar, & Brown, ; Mehravari, Tanner, Wampler, Valentine, & Osterhout, ; Osterhout & Holcomb, ; Osterhout & Mobley, ; Tanner & Bulkes, ), as do some words in well‐formed but complex sentences (e.g., garden path sentences: Gouvea, Phillips, Kazanina, & Poeppel, ; Kaan & Swaab, ; Osterhout, Holcomb, & Swinney, ). This set of syntax‐related findings led some to argue that the P600 reflects essentially syntactic processes (e.g., Allen, Badecker, & Osterhout, ; Gouvea et al, ; Kos, Vosse, van den Brink, & Hagoort, ; Osterhout, Mckinnon, Bersick, & Corey, ; Osterhout & Nicol, ).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…That is, recent studies note that there are no clear processing difficulties in grammatical sentences with singular heads and plural attractors (e.g., “The winner of the trophies was … ”) compared to singular‐singular head‐attractor configurations. This finding has led some to postulate that establishment of subject‐verb agreement dependencies utilizes a combination of prediction and retrieval mechanisms (Dillon, Mishler, Sloggett, & Phillips, ; Lago, Shalom, Sigman, Lau, & Phillips, ; Parker & Phillips, ; Tanner, Nicol, & Brehm, ; Wagers et al, ; see also Mehravari et al, ; Tanner & Bulkes, ). On this account, morphosyntactic agreement features for the verb are predicted upon encountering the head NP.…”

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confidence: 99%

Dissociating retrieval interference and reanalysis in the P600 during sentence comprehension

2016

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We investigated the relative independence of two key processes in language comprehension, as reflected in the P600 ERP component. Numerous studies have linked the P600 to sentence- or message-level reanalysis; however, much research has shown that skilled, cue-based memory retrieval operations are also important to successful language processing. Our goal was to identify whether these cue-based retrieval operations are part of the reanalysis processes indexed by the P600. To this end, participants read sentences that were either grammatical or ungrammatical via subject-verb agreement violations, and in which there was either no possibility for retrieval interference or there was an attractor noun interfering with the computation of subject-verb agreement (e.g., "The slogan on the political poster(s) was/were …"). A stimulus onset asynchrony manipulation (fast, medium, or slow presentation rate) was designed to modulate participants' ability to engage in reanalysis processes. Results showed a reliable attraction interference effect, indexed by reduced behavioral sensitivity to ungrammaticalities and P600 amplitudes when there was an opportunity for retrieval interference, as well as an effect of presentation rate, with reduced behavioral sensitivity and smaller P600 effects at faster presentation rates. Importantly, there was no interaction between the two, suggesting that retrieval interference and sentence-level reanalysis processes indexed by the P600 can be neurocognitively distinct processes.

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“…Generally, grammatical number violations are registered rapidly (Barber & Carreiras, 2005;Pulvermüller & Shtyrov, 2003;Wagers, Lau, & Phillips, 2009), depending on the number and distance of cues at hand (Schweppe, 2013;Tanner & Bulkes, 2015). We are not aware of any previous evidence, relating conflicting grammatical number cues to the interpretation of conceptual number.…”

Section: Linguistic Specificitiesmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…One might suppose that this unique relationship between grammatical number and unit number magnitude may lead to grammatical number effects for Polish when unit magnitude is task relevant. The processing of number agreement violations seems to take into account the number of cues (Tanner & Bulkes, 2015).…”

Section: Syntactic Influences On Number Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Syntactic influences on numerical processing in adults: Limited but detectable

Cipora¹,

Loenneker²,

Soltanlou³

et al. 2019

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In everyday situations, numbers appear in a linguistic context: we communicate and perceive numbers within phrases and sentences. However, languages differ in how they refer to numerosities, and such differences influence number acquisition in children. One of them is in the link between grammatical inflection and specific numbers. Here we asked whether such differences prevail in adults by using the peculiarities of the Polish language. The Polish language is characterized by a complex agreement system between conceptual number and grammatical number: numbers 2-4 require plural grammatical number inflection on the verb while numbers 5-9 require singular inflection. We expected this complex mapping to affect the numerical SNARC (Spatial Numerical Association of Response Codes; i.e., faster left / right-hand responses to small / large magnitude numbers, respectively) and grammatical SNARC (i.e., faster left / right-hand responses to singular / plural grammatical forms, respectively) effects at least when grammatical number is made salient. In a task-switching setup, Polish-, German- and English-speaking participants were presented with simple sentences ending in two-digit numbers. Depending on the cue, participants had to judge either the grammatical number of the verb, or the parity status of the number. Surprisingly, no numerical SNARC effect was observed in either task, however a reversed grammatical SNARC effect was found for Polish (but not German and English) in parity judgments. Moreover, only Polish speakers responded faster to parity in the case of grammatically correct sentences. We conclude that grammatical number has a limited, but detectable influence on numerical processing in adults.

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Cues, quantification, and agreement in language comprehension

Cited by 21 publications

References 63 publications

Effects of Grammaticality and Morphological Complexity on the P600 Event-Related Potential Component

Effects of Grammaticality and Morphological Complexity on the P600 Event-Related Potential Component

Dissociating retrieval interference and reanalysis in the P600 during sentence comprehension

Syntactic influences on numerical processing in adults: Limited but detectable

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