Different Anaphoric Expressions Are Investigated by Event-Related Brain Potentials

Abstract

Event-related potentials were recorded to substantiate the claim of a distinct psycholinguistic status of (a) pronouns vs. proper names and (b) ellipses vs. proper names. In two studies 41 students read sentences in which the number of intervening words between the anaphor and its antecedent was either small or large. Comparing the far with the near distance condition revealed anaphor resolution specific effects: Ellipses triggered a potential shift with a short latency (approximately 120-200 ms) and with a fronto-central scalp distribution while pronouns and proper names triggered one with a longer latency (approximately 360-440 ms) and a parietal to right-occipital distribution. The early effect resembled the left-anterior negativity which has been related to syntax processing, while the latter resembled an N400 which is assumed to reflect semantic integration processes. These findings support the idea that ellipses and pronouns/proper names are processed by distinct mechanisms being implemented in distinct cortical cell assemblies.

Processing bare quantifiers in discourse

“…If the LAN reflects working memory effort associated with this reactivation, it is therefore not surprising that no differences were found between the two conditions. Similarly, an N400 effect has been mainly found in studies in which a noun phrase or proper name was repeated (Anderson and Holcomb, 2005;Burkhardt, 2006;Streb, et al, 2004;Streb, et al, 1999;Swaab, et al, 2004) or the antecedent was harder to retrieve (Streb, et al, 2004), regardless of the given/new status of the critical noun phrase referent (Anderson and Holcomb, 2005). …”

“…An N400 or N400-like component has also been reported for pronouns and repeated proper names that are relatively hard to integrate into the discourse model, either because they refer to more distal as opposed to recently mentioned antecedents (Streb, Henninghausen and Rösler, 2004), or because they refer to antecedents in syntactically non-parallel (harder) positions as opposed to parallel syntactic positions (easier) (Streb, Rösler and Henninghausen, 1999).…”

Positional influences on information packaging: Insights from topological fields in German

“…Discourse Linking is reflected by N400-modulations and is highly driven by expectations built up from the context of utterance (for intertextual expectations see Burkhardt, 2006;van Berkum, Hagoort, & Brown, 1999; for interlocutor-specific expectations see van Berkum, Holleman, Nieuwland, Otten, & Murre, 2009;van Berkum, van den Brink, Tesink, Kos, & Hagoort, 2008). The expectations that guide Discourse Linking are further generated from the referent's salience, most prominently encoded by lexical-semantics, but also by structural parallelism, distance, referential form, or prosodic cues, among others (e.g., Schumacher & Baumann, 2010;Streb, Hennighausen, & Rösler, 2004;Streb, Rösler, & Hennighausen, 1999). Likewise givenness has been shown to modulate this process (Burkhardt, 2006, et seq.…”

Verb gapping: An action-gap compatibility study

“…Streb, Henninghausen, and Rösler (2004) contrasted different anaphoric constructions, including verb gapping as an example of surface anaphora (Hankamer & Sag, 1976) and pronouns as an example of deep anaphora. Carlson (2001), Carlson, Dickey, and Kennedy (2005) and Hoeks, Redeker, and Hendriks (2009) addressed the interpretation of sentences such as (2) that are ambiguous between a gapping reading (Katherine met Spencer yesterday and Humphrey met Spencer today) and a "conjunctionreduction" reading (left peripheral deletion: Katherine met Spencer yesterday and Katherine met Humphrey today).…”