When syntax meets semantics

Abstract

Three experiments concerning the processing of syntactic and semantic violations were conducted. Event-related potentials (ERPs) showed that semantic violations elicited an N400 response, whereas syntactic violations elicited two early negativities (150 and 350 ms) and a P600 response. No interaction between the semantic and early syntactic ERP effects was found. Sentence complexity and violation probability (25% vs. 75%) affected only the P600 and not the early negativities. The probability effect was taken as evidence that the P600 resembles the P3b. The temporal order of word processing in a sentence as suggested by the data was such that a more automatic syntactic analysis was performed (earlier syntactic-related negativities) in parallel with a semantic analysis (N400), after which a syntactic reanalysis was performed (P600). A reanalysis interpretation of the P600 could explain why the extent of the reanalysis differed with syntactic complexity and probability of ungrammaticality.

An ERP study of syntactic processing in English and nonsense sentences

“…The interpretation of the present results, that syntactic and semantic information are integrated even during the early stages of syntactic processing indexed by the anterior negativities, may seem to contradict the conclusion drawn in previous studies which used doubly-anomalous sentences Gunter et al, 2000;Gunter et al, 1997;Hahne & Friederici, 2002). These studies compared the ERP effects elicited by words that violate both syntactic and semantic constraints (doubly-anomalous condition) to those elicited by words that violate only a syntactic constraint (syntactic-violation condition).…”

“…Two factors investigated extensively are the proportion of sentences with (morpho-) syntactic violations and the relevance of violations to the performance of an experimental task. These studies have found that the amplitude of the P600 is reduced when the proportion of ungrammatical sentences is high (≥ 75 %) (Coulson et al, 1998;Gunter et al, 1997;Hahne & Friederici, 1999a) or when participants were not asked to make grammaticality judgments (Gunter & Friederici, 1999;Hahne & Friederici, 2002;Osterhout, Allen, McLaughlin & Inoue, 2002b;Osterhout & Mobley, 1995). Hahne and Friederici (2002), for example, presented both syntactically and semantically anomalous sentences and asked participants to judge the semantic coherence of each sentence while ignoring syntactic errors.…”

“…In this type of approach, the critical difference in semantic processing (i.e., processing anomalous vs. coherent words) occurs simultaneously with, but not prior to, a (morpho-) syntactic violation. Studies using this approach found no effect of a semantic anomaly on the ELAN or LAN (Friederici, Steinhauer & Frisch, 1999;Gunter et al, 2000;Gunter, Stowe & Mulder, 1997;Hahne & Friederici, 2002). Some studies reported that the P600 was reduced or absent in the doubly-anomalous condition as compared to the P600 elicited in a syntactic-violation-only condition (Gunter et al, 2000;Gunter et al, 1997, Experiment 2;Hahne & Friederici, 2002, Experiment 2), but others have not observed such reduction (Ainsworth-Darnell, Shulman & Boland, 1998;Friederici et al, 1999;Gunter et al, 1997, Experiment 1;Hagoort, 2003;Hahne & Friederici, 2002, Experiment 1;Osterhout & Nicol, 1999).…”

Syntactic language processing: ERP lesion data on the role of the basal ganglia

“…One question that these studies left open was to clarify whether the P600 reflects late syntactic processes or rather varies as a function of attentional demands. This question is also reflected in an ongoing debate whether the P600 is language-specific or just a P300-like effect, indicating the attention driven detection of an unexpected, task-relevant target (Coulson et al, 1998;Gunter et al, 1997). To test this question, Frisch et al (2003) tested patients with focal vascular basal ganglia lesions and patients without basal ganglia lesions.…”

The brain knows the difference: two types of grammatical violations

“…Differential aspects of syntactic processing have been correlated with an early and a late ERP component, namely a left anterior negativity (LAN) between 100 and 500 ms and a centro-parietal positivity post 600 ms (P600). Morphosyntactic violations such as subject -verb agreement evoke a LAN between 300 and 500 ms followed by a P600 ( [1,11,20], but see Ref. [24]).…”