Tasks and timing in the perception of linguistic anomaly

Fodor, Jerry A.; Ni, Weijia; Crain, Stephen; Shankweiler, Donald

doi:10.1007/bf01708419

Cited by 36 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…This is evidenced by the healthy seniors' sensitivity to thematic violations in both the early and late time windows, and is consistent with reaction time studies to coherence judgments of sentences that find slower responses to semantic and thematic violations than syntactic errors (Fodor et al, 1996;McElree & Griffith, 1995).…”

Section: Sentence Processing In Healthy Seniorssupporting

confidence: 83%

“…Finally, a third component with wide positive bilateral posterior distribution is related to structural reanalysis (Osterhout & Holcomb, 1992;Osterhout, Holcomb, & Swinney, 1994). This multi-stage model of sentence processing is also supported by reaction time studies to coherence judgments of sentences, which find slower responses to semantic and thematic violations than to syntactic errors (Fodor, Ni, Crain, & Shankweiler, 1996;McElree & Griffith, 1995).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 59%

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Syntactic and thematic components of sentence processing in progressive nonfluent aphasia and nonaphasic frontotemporal dementia

Peelle¹,

Cooke²,

Moore³

et al. 2007

Journal of Neurolinguistics

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We used an online word-monitoring paradigm to examine sentence processing in healthy seniors and frontotemporal dementia patients with progressive nonfluent aphasia (PNFA) or a nonaphasic disorder of social and executive functioning (SOC/EXEC). Healthy seniors were sensitive to morphosyntactic, major grammatical subcategory, and selection restriction violations in a sentence. PNFA patients were insensitive to grammatical errors, but showed reasonable sensitivity to thematic matrix violations, consistent with a differential grammatical processing impairment. By contrast, SOC/EXEC patients showed partial sensitivity to grammatical errors but were insensitive to thematic violations. These findings support a dissociation between grammatical and thematic components of sentence processing. Specifically, they are consistent with a grammatical processing deficit in PNFA patients, and impairment in the formation of a coherent thematic matrix in SOC/EXEC patients.

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Section: Sentence Processing In Healthy Seniorssupporting

confidence: 83%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 59%

Syntactic and thematic components of sentence processing in progressive nonfluent aphasia and nonaphasic frontotemporal dementia

Peelle¹,

Cooke²,

Moore³

et al. 2007

Journal of Neurolinguistics

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“…There are several early theories of comprehension that assume that comprehension occurs in stages, and this assumption leads to two relevant implications: first, sentences (or constituents) are understood independently before being related to the prior discourse and secondly, because of this, discourse information is only available relatively later during processing (see Chomsky, 1975;Fodor et al, 1974;Forster, 1989;Katz, 1972;Searle, 1979;Sperber and Wilson, 1986). A less strong version of this idea suggests that discourse information does make contact with the ongoing processing after each word, however processes related to the discourse only occur after the individual word meaning, syntax and sentence-level semantics have been broadly established (Frazier, 1999;Fodor et al, 1996).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The interaction of discourse context and world knowledge in online sentence comprehension. Evidence from the N400

Hald¹,

Steenbeek-Planting²,

Hagoort³

2007

Brain Research

108

105

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In an ERP experiment we investigated how the recruitment and integration of world knowledge information relate to the integration of information within a current discourse context. Participants were presented with short discourse contexts which were followed by a sentence that contained a critical word that was correct or incorrect based on general world knowledge and the supporting discourse context, or was more or less acceptable based on the combination of general world knowledge and the specific local discourse context. Relative to the critical word in the correct world knowledge sentences following a neutral discourse, all other critical words elicited an N400 effect that began at about 300 ms after word onset. However, the magnitude of the N400 effect varied in a way that suggests an interaction between world knowledge and discourse context. The results indicate that both world knowledge and discourse context have an effect on sentence interpretation, but neither overrides the other. IntroductionAlmost everyday we read or listen to new information. Listening to the news, speaking with a family member or coworker, overhearing a conversation or watching a television show will likely all involve encountering some new information, such as an anecdote of something that happened that day. Deriving the meaning of each of these utterances involves, at the least, retrieving the meanings of the individual words and facts about the world and combining them in a way that is licensed by the grammar and the prior discourse context. However, we sometimes hear new facts that may or may not be congruent with what we already know, for example, when speaking with a friend (e.g., Mary says to Bob, "John can't make it to the party", when Bob thought John was coming to the party) or watching a television show (e.g., "The pigs are flying low today, eh", John Cleese, 1969 in Monty Python's Flying Circus). When this occurs, do we initially just incorporate the current discourse for understanding the sentence or do we also integrate our world knowledge, creating a conflict? The purpose of the current study is to investigate how the recruitment and integration of world knowledge information relate to the integration of information within a current discourse context. When the discourse information does not fit with our previous world knowledge, is the default world knowledge overwritten? Models of language comprehension disagree on how and when discourse information and world knowledge are

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“…Associated with this general view of processing is the intuitively plausible idea that the linking of a sentence to earlier discourse will somehow be more complex, and hence probably also slower, than the computation of sentence-internal semantic relations (e.g., Fodor, Ni, Crain, & Schankweiler, 1996;Kintsch, 1998;Perfetti, 1990;Till, Mross, & Kintsch, 1988). A closely related idea is the literal meaning hypothesis, which holds that language users always rst compute the literal meaning of an utterance before they compute a contextually appropriate meaning (e.g., Searle, 1979;see Gibbs, 1984, for discussion).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Semantic Integration in Sentences and Discourse: Evidence from the N400

Berkum

Hagoort

Brown

1999

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

500

373

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In two ERP experiments we investigated how and when the language comprehension system relates an incoming word to semantic representations of an unfolding local sentence and a wider discourse. In Experiment 1, subjects were presented with short stories. The last sentence of these stories occasionally contained a critical word that, although acceptable in the local sentence context, was semantically anomalous with respect to the wider discourse (e.g., Jane told the brother that he was exceptionally slow in a discourse context where he had in fact been very quick). Relative to coherent control words (e.g., quick), these discourse-dependent semantic anomalies elicited a large N400 effect that began at about 200 to 250 msec after word onset. In Experiment 2, the same sentences were presented without their original story context. Although the words that had previously been anomalous in discourse still elicited a slightly larger average N400 than the coherent words, the resulting N400 effect was much reduced, showing that the large effect observed in stories depended on the wider discourse. In the same experiment, single sentences that contained a clear local semantic anomaly elicited a standard sentence-dependent N400 effect (e.g., Kutas & Hillyard, 1980). The N400 effects elicited in discourse and in single sentences had the same time course, overall morphology, and scalp distribution. We argue that these ndings are most compatible with models of language processing in which there is no fundamental distinction between the integration of a word in its local (sentence-level) and its global (discourse-level) semantic context.

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Tasks and timing in the perception of linguistic anomaly

Cited by 36 publications

References 15 publications

Syntactic and thematic components of sentence processing in progressive nonfluent aphasia and nonaphasic frontotemporal dementia

Syntactic and thematic components of sentence processing in progressive nonfluent aphasia and nonaphasic frontotemporal dementia

The interaction of discourse context and world knowledge in online sentence comprehension. Evidence from the N400

Semantic Integration in Sentences and Discourse: Evidence from the N400

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