Electrophysiological evidence for incremental lexical-semantic integration in auditory compound comprehension

Abstract

The present study investigated the time-course of semantic integration in auditory compound word processing. Compounding is a productive mechanism of word formation that is used frequently in many languages. Specifically, we examined whether semantic integration is incremental or is delayed until the head, the last constituent in German, is available. Stimuli were compounds consisting of three nouns, and the semantic plausibility of the second and the third constituent was manipulated independently (high vs. low). Participants' task was to listen to the compounds and evaluate them semantically. Event-related brain potentials in response to the head constituents showed an increased N400 for less plausible head constituents, reflecting the lexical-semantic integration of all three compound constituents. In response to the second (less plausible) constituents, an increased N400 with a central-left scalp distribution was observed followed by a parietal positivity. The occurrence of this N400 effect during the presentation of the second constituents suggests that the initial two non-head constituents are immediately integrated. The subsequent positivity might be an instance of a P600 and is suggested to reflect the structural change of the initially constructed compound structure. The results suggest that lexical-semantic integration of compound constituents is an incremental process and, thus, challenge a recent proposal on the time-course of semantic processing in auditory compound comprehension.

Processing of English compounds is sensitive to the constituents’ semantic transparency

“…In addition, they found that parsing choice for ambiguous compounds is driven by the relative semantic plausibility of the parses (e.g., clamp+rod and clam+prod). This result is not restricted to ambiguous novel compounds; Koester, Holle, and Gunter (2009) found that German three-word compounds with plausible constituents were easier to interpret than were compounds with less plausible constituents.…”

Electrophysiological evidence for the morpheme-based combinatoric processing of English compounds

“…Moreover, since N400 has been argued to reflect aspects of combinatorial processing (German: Holle et al, 2010; Koester et al, 2007, Koester et al, 2009; Chinese: Bai et al, 2008; see also Vergara-Martínez, Duñabeitia, Laka, & Carreiras, 2009, for attribution of N400 to selectional/integrational processing in Basque visually-presented compounds), it is possible that some aspects of the combinatoric processing of lexicalized and novel English compounds may also engender increased negativities in the N400 (or, as described in some of the literature, an N400-like negativity). However, it is also possible that some aspects of the combinatoric processing of lexicalized and/or novel compounds may engender anterior negativities (i.e., LAN effects; note that responses attributed in the literature to LAN often extend beyond the Left Anterior region into other anterior regions, and even extend sometimes to posterior regions).…”

“…Moreover, these studies suggest that constituent access (Holle et al, 2010) and compositional processing may engender N400 effects (Holle et al, 2010; Koester et al, 2007, 2009; Bai et al, 2008). These studies thus converge in suggesting that N400-like negativities may indeed reflect aspects of morphological decomposition and post-decompositional, combinatoric operations.…”

“…Likewise, Koester, Gunter, and Wagner (2007) tested auditorily presented, low-frequency semantically transparent vs. opaque German compounds, finding that semantic transparency modulates an N400-like response; this negativity was greater for the transparent than the opaque compounds. They interpret this as reflecting increased processing of the transparent compared to the opaque compounds, for which they speculate composition may not be attempted (see also Koester, Holle, and Gunter, 2009, for increased negativities to less-plausible constituents in the processing of auditory trimorphemic compounds).…”

Non-linear processing of a linear speech stream: The influence of morphological structure on the recognition of spoken Arabic words

“…Responses to morphological violations such as the incorrect use of verbal inflection have also been evidenced to elicit specific ERP response components, independent from semantic or syntactic lexical errors (Friederici, Pfeifer, & Hahne, 1993). Furthermore, compound words that consist of two free stems (e.g., teacup) also http appear to be decomposed into their constituents and incrementally integrated (Koester, Holle, & Gunter, 2009), aided by prosodic information (Koester, 2014).…”