Incremental comprehension of spoken quantifier sentences:Evidence from brain potentials

Do people incrementally incorporate the meaning of quantifier expressions to understand an unfolding sentence? Most previous studies concluded that quantifiers do not immediately influence how a sentence is understood based on the observation that online N400-effects differed from offline plausibility judgments. Those studies, however, used serial visual presentation (SVP), which involves unnatural reading. In the current ERP-experiment, we presented spoken positive and negative quantifier sentences (“Practically all/practically no postmen prefer delivering mail, when the weather is good/bad during the day”). Different from results obtained in a previously reported SVP-study (Nieuwland, 2016) sentence truth-value N400 effects occurred in positive and negative quantifier sentences alike, reflecting fully incremental quantifier comprehension. This suggests that the prosodic information available during spoken language comprehension supports the generation of online predictions for upcoming words and that, at least for quantifier sentences, comprehension of spoken language may proceed more incrementally than comprehension during SVP reading

Wie Wörter Wellen werden. Die Untersuchung von Sprachverarbeitung mittels EEG

In diesem Beitrag werden nach einer kurzen methodischen Vorstellung der Elektroenzephalographie und der Ereignis-korrelierten Potenziale einige Eckpunkte, die bei der Gestaltung eines linguistischen EEG-Experimentes Beachtung finden sollten, ausgeführt. Der Beitrag schliest mit Überlegungen, die bei der Untersuchung grammatischer Variation besonders berücksichtigt werden sollten

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience / Semantic prediction in language comprehension : evidence from brain potentials

Do people predict specific word-forms during language comprehension? In an Event-Related Potential (ERP) study participants read German sentences with predictable (The goalkeeper claims that the slick ball was easy to CATCH.) and unpredictable (The kids boasted that the young horse was easy to SADDLE.) verbs. Verbs were either consistent with the expected word-form (catch/ saddle) or inconsistent and therefore led to ungrammaticality (*catches/*saddles). ERPs within the N400 time-window were modulated by predictability but not by the surface-form of the verbs, suggesting that no exact word-forms were predicted. Based on our results we will argue that predictions included semantic rather than form-information. Furthermore, ungrammatical verbs led to a strong P600, probably due to task-saliency whereas correct unpredictable verbs elicited an anterior post-N400 positivity. Because the contexts were moderately constraining, this might reflect discourse revision processes rather than inhibition of a predicted word.FWF-W1233(VLID)238999