Violations of information structure: An electrophysiological study of answers to wh-questions

Abstract

This study investigates brain responses to violations of information structure in wh-questionanswer pairs, with particular emphasis on violations of focus assignment in it-clefts (It was the queen that silenced the banker). Two types of ERP responses in answers to wh-questions were found. First, all words in the focus-marking (cleft) position elicited a large positivity (P3b) characteristic of sentence-final constituents, as did the final words of these sentences, which suggests that focused elements may trigger integration effects like those seen at sentence end. Second, the focusing of an inappropriate referent elicited a smaller, N400-like effect. The results show that comprehenders actively use structural focus cues and discourse-level restrictions during online sentence processing. These results, based on visual stimuli, were different from the brain response to auditory focus violations indicated by pitch-accent (Hruska et al. 2000), but similar to brain responses to newly introduced discourse referents (Bornkessel et al. 2003). This paper examines the contribution of information structure to sentence processing by investigating what kinds of ERP responses are elicited when focus is incorrectly assigned via syntactic structure. For example, the answers that speakers give to wh-questions of the kind shown in (1) are constrained not only in terms of their propositional content, but also in terms of how that content is packaged. (1a) is an acceptable (if somewhat verbose) answer to the question while (1b) is not, in spite of the fact that both answers provide the same information, namely that the agent of lettuce-eating was the rabbits.(1) What ate the lettuce in your garden, the deer or the rabbits? a. It was the rabbits that ate the lettuce.b. #It was the lettuce that the rabbits ate. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptThe critical difference, then, lies not in the content of the answer, but in the form in which it is presented.This simple example shows that answers to wh-questions are constrained by information structure, namely the division of content into topic and focus. The informative part of an answer to a wh-question must present new or newly activated information, and thus have focus status. Cleft constructions in particular, like those shown in (1a) and (1b), provide a means of identifying the element in the clefted position as focus (e.g. Rochemont 1986;Lambrecht, 2001), and this is indicated in the example by means of underlining.Knowing the nature of the brain's response to information structure violations can give us a better understanding of the processes that underlie the comprehension of information structure categories like focus; it can also provide insight into the functional significance of the brain response that is elicited. For example, if the answers to wh-questions that violate focus constraints were to elicit an increase in N400 amplitude (Kutas & Hillyard, 1980), this would provide evidence that the N400 is sensitive not only to lexi...

Processing contextual and lexical cues to focus: Evidence from eye movements in reading

“…This research supports claims that focus is marked on the sentence-level, e.g., in terms of syntax and prosody, while context may modify expectations of the focus structure of an upcoming sentence (e.g., Beaver & Clark, 2008;Cowles et al, 2007). It remains to be determined, however, how expectations of the focus structure triggered by context may interact with the default focus structure (Carlson, Dickey, Frazier, & Clifton, 2009a;Stohlterfoht, Friederici, Alter, & Steube, 2007; see also Selkirk, 1995) or the given-before-new preference (Arnold, Wasow, Losongco, & Ginstrom, 2000;Bresnan, Cueni, Nikitina, & Baayen, 2007;Clifton & Frazier, 2004).…”

“…Detection of cue-conflict will be revealed by higher reading times in cue-conflict than cue-match conditions. The findings by Cowles et al (2007) and Dimitrova et al (2010b) from ERP studies indicate this may happen quite early in processing, and in the present experiment this may be observed as early as in region 3, the objects region.…”

“…affected processing at the prosodically focused object (i.e., to the player). However, while the studies by Cowles et al (2007) and Dimitrova et al (2010b) are informative about the time course of the impact of focus conflict on sentence processing, they do not show whether and how this cue-conflict is resolved. As eye moments have been widely used to investigate the real-time processing of syntactic and focus effects in previous research (e.g., Birch & Rayner, 1997;Paterson et al, 2007), it will be of considerable interest to determine how these effects influence eye movements while reading.…”

“…Other research has shown that sentence processing is disrupted when the focus structure of the target sentence is unexpected or infelicitous in a given context (Cowles et al, 2007;Dimitrova et al, 2010a). This research supports claims that focus is marked on the sentence-level, e.g., in terms of syntax and prosody, while context may modify expectations of the focus structure of an upcoming sentence (e.g., Beaver & Clark, 2008;Cowles et al, 2007).…”

“…Reading times were higher for the remnant (e.g., not the senator) when lexical and contextual cues were in conflict, indicating that cue-conflict can disrupt processing, and sentence-final questions revealed that the cue conflict was not resolved. An ERP study by Cowles et al (2007), which investigated the interaction between context and syntactic focus in it-clefts during reading, showed that the processing of the clefted element was disrupted when a preceding interrogative context did not specify focus on the clefted element. Similarly, Dimitrova et al (2010b) report an auditory ERP study on Dutch double object constructions (e.g., They gave only a bonus to the player.)…”