Verbing nouns and nouning verbs: Using a balanced design provides ERP evidence against “syntax-first” approaches to sentence processing

Fromont, Lauren A.; Steinhauer, Karsten; Royle, Phaedra

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0229169

Cited by 16 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…In terms of amplitude modulations, both of the incongruous and ungrammatical conditions (repetition and non-repetition) elicit central-parietal P600 effects. The results agree with several previous studies (e.g., Ye et al, 2006;Zhang et al, 2013;Yang et al, 2015;Fromont et al, 2020). Although there is a difference in terms of memory retrieval facilitation between repetition and non-repetition conditions, the amplitudes of P600s in these two anomalous conditions were not statistically different from each other (based on an overall averaged data comparison from 500 to 800 ms time window).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Delving Into the Working Mechanism of Prediction in Sentence Comprehension: An ERP Study

et al. 2021

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The present study aims to delineate the working mechanism of prediction in sentence comprehension, by disentangling the influence of the facilitated general memory retrieval from the coexistent influence of the predicted language-specific semantic and/or syntactic information for the first time. The results support that prediction might influence the downstream cognitive processing in two aspects: (1) the pre-activated information facilitates the retrieval of a matched input in memory and, (2) the pre-activated information interacts with higher-level semantic/syntactic processing. More importantly, the present findings suggest that these two types of influences seem to occur at different stages of sentence comprehension: the facilitated memory retrieval of the input modulates N400 amplitude and the latency of post-N400 late central-parietal positivity/P600, while the predicted semantic/syntactic information and/or their interactions modulate the amplitude of the late positivity. The present findings would be helpful for interpreting the underlying mechanism of observed effects in prediction studies.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Delving Into the Working Mechanism of Prediction in Sentence Comprehension: An ERP Study

et al. 2021

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“…A main Unmasked Correctness effect arose at around 910 ms with a widespread central negativity, which might reflect a N400 component to morphosyntactic anomalies (for similar N400 topographies and functional significance see: Molinaro et al, 2015;Fromont et al, 2020;Jiménez-Ortega et al, 2020). However, the onset of the component seems to be somehow delayed in comparison to other recent studies using similar sentences (Hinchcliffe et al, 2020;Jiménez-Ortega et al, 2020), wherein LAN/N400 components to syntactic anomalies are generally triggered at around 400 ms.…”

Section: The Flexible and Content-dependent Nature Of Syntaxmentioning

confidence: 59%

The Automatic but Flexible and Content-Dependent Nature of Syntax

Jiménez-Ortega

Badaya

Casado

et al. 2021

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Syntactic processing has often been considered an utmost example of unconscious automatic processing. In this line, it has been demonstrated that masked words containing syntactic anomalies are processed by our brain triggering event related potential (ERP) components similar to the ones triggered by conscious syntactic anomalies, thus supporting the automatic nature of the syntactic processing. Conversely, recent evidence also points out that regardless of the level of awareness, emotional information and other relevant extralinguistic information modulate conscious syntactic processing too. These results are also in line with suggestions that, under certain circumstances, syntactic processing could also be flexible and context-dependent. However, the study of the concomitant automatic but flexible conception of syntactic parsing is very scarce. Hence, to this aim, we examined whether and how masked emotional words (positive, negative, and neutral masked adjectives) containing morphosyntactic anomalies (half of the cases) affect linguistic comprehension of an ongoing unmasked sentence that also can contain a number agreement anomaly between the noun and the verb. ERP components were observed to emotional information (EPN), masked anomalies (LAN and a weak P600), and unmasked ones (LAN/N400 and P600). Furthermore, interactions in the processing of conscious and unconscious morphosyntactic anomalies and between unconscious emotional information and conscious anomalies were detected. The findings support, on the one hand, the automatic nature of syntax, given that syntactic components LAN and P600 were observed to unconscious anomalies. On the other hand, the flexible, permeable, and context-dependent nature of the syntactic processing is also supported, since unconscious information modulated conscious syntactic components. This double nature of syntactic processing is in line with theories of automaticity, suggesting that even unconscious/automatic, syntactic processing is flexible, adaptable, and context-dependent.

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“…Instead, the N400 would be an indication of difficulties with word retrieval (e.g. Choudhary et al, 2009 ; Brouwer et al, 2017 ) in the cases where the presented word is not an expected verb (see Fromont et al, 2020 for a biphasic N400/P600 response to word category violations).…”

Section: Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a recent paper, Fromont et al (2020) have also suggested that a biphasic N400-P600 response can be considered to be an index of word order violations (referred to as a syntactic category violation in the paper). When controlling for the word preceding the critical word (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Native Word Order Processing Is Not Uniform: An ERP Study of Verb-Second Word Order

2022

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Studies of native syntactic processing often target phrase structure violations that do not occur in natural production. In contrast, this study examines how variation in basic word order is processed, looking specifically at structures traditionally labelled as violations but that do occur naturally. We examined Swedish verb-second (V2) and verb-third (V3) word order processing in adult native Swedish speakers, manipulating sentence-initial adverbials (temporal idag ‘today’, spatial hemma ‘at home’ and sentential kanske ‘maybe’) in acceptability judgements, in simultaneously recorded event-related potentials (ERP) to visually presented sentences and in a written sentence completion task. An initial corpus study showed that the adverbials differ in frequency in fronted position (idag > kanske > hemma), and although all occur mainly with V2 word order, kanske occurs more frequently with V3 in natural production than both idag and hemma. The experimental results reflected these patterns such that V2 sentences were overall more frequently produced and were deemed more acceptable than V3 sentences. The ERP results consisted of a biphasic N400/P600 response to V3 word order that indicated effects of word retrieval and sentence reanalysis. We also found consistent effects of adverbials. As predicted, V3 was produced more frequently and judged as more acceptable in Kanske sentences than in sentences with the other two adverbials. The ERP analyses showed stronger effects for idag and hemma with V3, especially regarding the P600. The results suggest that the naturally occurring word order ‘violation’, V3 with kanske, is processed differently than V3 with other adverbials where the V2 norm is stronger. Moreover, these patterns are related to individuals’ own production patterns. Overall, the results suggest a more varied native word order processing than previously reported.

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Verbing nouns and nouning verbs: Using a balanced design provides ERP evidence against “syntax-first” approaches to sentence processing

Cited by 16 publications

References 72 publications

Delving Into the Working Mechanism of Prediction in Sentence Comprehension: An ERP Study

Delving Into the Working Mechanism of Prediction in Sentence Comprehension: An ERP Study

The Automatic but Flexible and Content-Dependent Nature of Syntax

Native Word Order Processing Is Not Uniform: An ERP Study of Verb-Second Word Order

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