Parsing of Sentences in a Language with Varying Word Order: Word-by-Word Variations of Processing Demands Are Revealed by Event-Related Brain Potentials

Rösler, Frank; Pechmann, Thomas; Streb, Judith; Röder, Brigitte; Hennighausen, Erwin

doi:10.1006/jmla.1997.2551

Cited by 144 publications

(119 citation statements)

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“…Fanselow, Schlesewsky, & Kliegl, 2000;Fiebach, Schlesewsky, & Friederici, 2001;Rösler, Pechmann, Streb, Röder, & Hennighausen, 1998). Most importantly for present purposes, previous studies using ERPs have shown that an object immediately following the finite verb (as in 1a) gives rise to processing difficulties which are reflected in a negative deflection approximately 300-450 ms post-onset of the word signalling a non-canonical structure (Rösler et al, 1998;Schlesewsky, Bornkessel, & Frisch, in press). One plausible grammar-based interpretation of this negativity is that it signals a mismatch between a predicted structural position and the element encountered in this position (Friederici, Schlesewsky, & Fiebach, in press).…”

Section: Properties Of German: Grammar Vs Frequencymentioning

confidence: 79%

“…immediately following the finite verb in the second position (1a) or the complementizer dass ('that', 1b Despite this apparent word-order freedom, it has consistently been observed that (unambiguous) sentences with an object-before-subject word order are more difficult to process than their subject-initial counterparts (e.g. Fanselow, Schlesewsky, & Kliegl, 2000;Fiebach, Schlesewsky, & Friederici, 2001;Rösler, Pechmann, Streb, Röder, & Hennighausen, 1998). Most importantly for present purposes, previous studies using ERPs have shown that an object immediately following the finite verb (as in 1a) gives rise to processing difficulties which are reflected in a negative deflection approximately 300-450 ms post-onset of the word signalling a non-canonical structure (Rösler et al, 1998;Schlesewsky, Bornkessel, & Frisch, in press).…”

Section: Properties Of German: Grammar Vs Frequencymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Grammar overrides frequency: evidence from the online processing of flexible word order

2002

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We show that online processing difficulties induced by word order variations in German cannot be attributed to the relative infrequency of the constructions in question, but rather appear to reflect the application of grammatical principles during parsing. Event-related brain potentials revealed that dative-marked objects in the initial position of an embedded sentence do not elicit a neurophysiologically distinct response from subjects, whereas accusative-marked objects do. These differences are predictable on the basis of grammatical distinctions (i.e. underlying linguistic properties), but not on the basis of frequency information (i.e. a superficial linguistic property). We therefore conclude that the former, but not the latter, guides syntactic integration during online parsing. q

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Section: Properties Of German: Grammar Vs Frequencymentioning

confidence: 79%

Section: Properties Of German: Grammar Vs Frequencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Grammar overrides frequency: evidence from the online processing of flexible word order

2002

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“…We assume that the P600 results from the reconciliation of propositional scene information with that of the preferred unfolding linguistic meaning, as outlined in the monitoring theory (Vissers et al, 2008) and the generalized mapping step of the eADM (Bornkessel & Schlesewsky, 2006). For unambiguous sentences, a second, and largely distinct, group of hidden units was shown to index the sustained LAN which is often associated with increased working memory costs (see Rösler et al, 1998;Matzke et al, 2002, and references therein).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this section we briefly sketch the model, its embodiment of the CIA, and the central behavioral findings accounted for by the model. We then consider the relevant ERP findings of Knoeferle, Habets, et al (2008), and provide a linking hypothesis for CIANet which accounts for those findings, and also those of Matzke et al (2002) (see Kluender & Kutas, 1993;Rösler, Pechmann, Streb, Röder, & Hennighausen, 1998, for related ERP findings on syntactic processing of word order variations).…”

Section: Pat2mentioning

confidence: 99%

Situated sentence processing: The coordinated interplay account and a neurobehavioral model

2010

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Empirical evidence demonstrating that sentence meaning is rapidly reconciled with the visual environment has been broadly construed as supporting the seamless interaction of visual and linguistic representations during situated comprehension. Based on recent behavioral and neuroscientific findings, however, we argue for the more deeply rooted coordination of the mechanisms underlying visual and linguistic processing, and for jointly considering the behavioral and neural correlates of scene-sentence reconciliation during situated comprehension. The Coordinated Interplay Account (CIA; Knoeferle & Crocker, 2007) asserts that incremental linguistic interpretation actively directs attention in the visual environment, thereby increasing the salience of attended scene information for comprehension. We review behavioral and neuroscientific findings in support of the CIA's three processing stages: (i) incremental sentence interpretation, (ii) language-mediated visual attention, and (iii) the on-line influence of non-linguistic visual context. We then describe a recently developed connectionist model which both embodies the central CIA proposals and has been successfully applied in modeling a range of behavioral findings from the visual world paradigm (Mayberry, Crocker, & Knoeferle, in press). Results from a new simulation suggest the model also correlates with event-related brain potentials elicited by the immediate use of visual context for linguistic disambiguation (Knoeferle, Habets, Crocker, & Münte, 2008). Finally, we argue that the mechanisms underlying interpretation, visual attention, and scene apprehension are not only in close temporal synchronization, but have co-adapted to optimize real-time visual grounding of situated spoken language, thus facilitating the association of linguistic, visual and motor representations that emerge during the course of our embodied linguistic experience in the world.

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“…Note that several other psycholinguists have also begun to examine reference-related issues by means of EEG (e.g., Anderson and Holcomb, 2005;Camblin et al, 2007;Hammer et al, 2005;Magne et al, 2005;Rösler et al, 1998;Schmitt et al, 2002;Swaab et al, 2004); we refer to Camblin et al, 2007, and Van Berkum, in press, for broader surveys.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Establishing reference in language comprehension: An electrophysiological perspective

Berkum¹,

Koornneef²,

Otten³

et al. 2007

Brain Research

194

214

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The electrophysiology of language comprehension has long been dominated by research on syntactic and semantic integration. However, to understand expressions like "he did it" or "the little girl", combining word meanings in accordance with semantic and syntactic constraints is not enough-readers and listeners also need to work out what or who is being referred to. We review our event-related brain potential research on the processes involved in establishing reference, and present a new experiment in which we examine when and how the implicit causality associated with specific interpersonal verbs affects the interpretation of a referentially ambiguous pronoun. The evidence suggests that upon encountering a singular noun or pronoun, readers and listeners immediately inspect their situation model for a suitable discourse entity, such that they can discriminate between having too many, too few, or exactly the right number of referents within at most half a second. Furthermore, our implicit causality findings indicate that a fragment like "David praised Linda because…" can immediately foreground a particular referent, to the extent that a subsequent "he" is at least initially construed as a syntactic error. In all, our brain potential findings suggest that referential processing is highly incremental, and not necessarily contingent upon the syntax. In addition, they demonstrate that we can use ERPs to relatively selectively keep track of how readers and listeners establish reference. IntroductionWords reliably mean things. In fact, something about word meaning is invariant enough to be listed in a dictionary. Here, for example, is what the Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary lists for the word "girl":girl (noun): 1. a female child or young woman, especially one still at school: "Two girls showed us round the classrooms."Of course, we all know that when a word is placed in the context of other words, shades of meaning can emerge. For "girl", some of the most familiar ones are listed in the dictionary too: girl (noun): ……… 2. a daughter: "We have two girls.", "My little girl is five." 3. [usually plural] a woman worker, especially when seen as one of a group: "shop/office girls" 4. [always plural] one of a group of female friends: "I'm going out with the girls tonight.", "The girls at work gave it to me"

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Parsing of Sentences in a Language with Varying Word Order: Word-by-Word Variations of Processing Demands Are Revealed by Event-Related Brain Potentials

Cited by 144 publications

References 28 publications

Grammar overrides frequency: evidence from the online processing of flexible word order

Grammar overrides frequency: evidence from the online processing of flexible word order

Situated sentence processing: The coordinated interplay account and a neurobehavioral model

Establishing reference in language comprehension: An electrophysiological perspective

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