Lexical Specification of Prosodic Information in Swedish: Evidence from Mismatch Negativity

Abstract

Like that of many other Germanic languages, the stress system of Swedish has mainly undergone phonological analysis. Recently, however, researchers have begun to recognize the central role of morphology in these systems. Similar to the lexical specification of tonal accent, the Swedish stress system is claimed to be morphologically determined and morphemes are thus categorized as prosodically specified and prosodically unspecified. Prosodically specified morphemes bear stress information as part of their lexical representations and are classified as tonic (i.e., lexically stressed), pretonic and posttonic, whereas prosodically unspecified morphemes receive stress through a phonological rule that is right-edge oriented, but is sensitive to prosodic specification at that edge. The presence of prosodic specification is inferred from vowel quality and vowel quantity; if stress moves elsewhere, vowel quality and quantity change radically in phonologically stressed morphemes, whereas traces of stress remain in lexically stressed morphemes. The present study is the first to investigate whether stress is a lexical property of Swedish morphemes by comparing mismatch negativity (MMN) responses to vowel quality and quantity changes in phonologically stressed and lexically stressed words. In a passive oddball paradigm, 15 native speakers of Swedish were presented with standards and deviants, which differed from the standards in formant frequency and duration. Given that vowel quality and quantity changes are associated with morphological derivations only in phonologically stressed words, MMN responses are expected to be greater in phonologically stressed words than in lexically stressed words that lack such an association. The results indicated that the processing differences between phonologically and lexically stressed words were reflected in the amplitude and topography of MMN responses. Confirming the expectation, MMN amplitude was greater for the phonologically stressed word than for the lexically stressed word and showed a more widespread topographic distribution. The brain did not only detect vowel quality and quantity changes but also used them to activate memory traces associated with derivations. The present study therefore implies that morphology is directly involved in the Swedish stress system and that changes in phonological shape due to stress shift cue upcoming stress and potential addition of a morpheme.

MisMatch Negativity-study showing pre-lexical sensitivity to both primary Final Accent and secondary Initial Accent in French

“…In other words, repeatedly presenting the same lexical item in the standard position, led to more specific anticipations and activations of lexical candidates, which, in turn, resulted in mmns reflecting the concurrent detection of several deviances: (1) the acoustic deviance, (2) the phonological mismatch and, possibly, (3) the mismatch to the lexical prediction (see e.g. Pulvermüller & Shtyrov, 2006; Jacobsen et al, 2004; Honbolygó et al, 2004; Honbolygó & Csépe, 2013; Honbolygó et al, 2017; Ylinen et al, 2009; Garami et al, 2017; Zora et al, 2016, for oddball studies investigating obstructed processing due to mismatching stress templates on words and/or pseudowords in Hungarian, Finnish and Swedish).…”

Perception of Prosodic Modulations of Linguistic and Paralinguistic Origin: Evidence From Early Auditory Event-Related Potentials

“…The MMN response was even documented for the relevance of prosody in early morphological processing in Swedish, and specification of stress (lexical vs. phonological) was demonstrated to influence the processing of derivations in the brain ( Zora et al, 2019 ). These MMN results, moving beyond the signal-based perception, pinpoint that linguistic prosody is indeed accommodated in the long-term memory representations ( Honbolygó and Csépe, 2013 ; Zora et al, 2015 , 2016a , b , 2019 , 2020 ). Affective prosody was also found to modulate the amplitude of MMN response, being larger for emotional than for neutral vocalizations ( Schirmer et al, 2005 , 2007 ; Schirmer and Kotz, 2006 ; Schirmer and Escoffier, 2010 ).…”

“…The MMN component is based on an oddball paradigm, where a deviant stimulus is interspersed among frequent standard stimuli, and signals the brain’s automatic reaction to deviations in auditory input at around 100–250 ms after divergence point and with a fronto-central scalp distribution ( Näätänen et al, 1978 , 2007 ). The MMN response successfully indicates neural correlates of both low-level acoustic and high-level cognitive processing associated with prosodic information (e.g., Näätänen et al, 1978 ; Honbolygó et al, 2004 , 2020 ; Weber et al, 2004 ; Friederici et al, 2007 ; Zora et al, 2015 , 2016a , b , 2019 , 2020 ; Garami et al, 2017 ). Previous research indicated MMN activation to linguistic prosody change in Swedish words that are distinguished on the sole basis of pitch accent, fasen 1 “the phase” and fasen 2 “expletive,” reflecting the activation of different lexical items in the brain based on prosody ( Zora et al, 2020 ).…”

Phonological Variations Are Compensated at the Lexical Level: Evidence From Auditory Neural Activity

“…The MMN response is typically investigated using a passive oddball paradigm, where a rare stimulus (deviant) is interspersed among frequent stimuli (standard), and is elicited even when attention is directed elsewhere ( Näätänen et al, 1978 , 2007 ; Paavilainen et al, 2007 ; Winkler, 2007 ). The MMN response is optimal for investigating assimilatory processes at the pre-lexical and lexical levels, as it reflects not only low-level acoustic processing but also higher-level cognitive and linguistic processes such as activation and formation of long-term memory representations and predictive processes ( Pulvermüller et al, 2001 ; Ylinen et al, 2010 , 2016 ; Zora et al, 2015 , 2016a , b , 2019 ; Garami et al, 2017 ). Given that the amplitude of MMN depends on the degree of variance between the stimuli ( Sams et al, 1985 ; Pakarinen et al, 2007 ), several studies used the MMN component to investigate the variations introduced by assimilatory processes and their consequences for the auditory neural activity ( Mitterer and Blomert, 2003 ; Mitterer et al, 2006 ; Tavabi et al, 2009 ).…”