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

Accent and second language listening comprehension

This paper reviews a series of studies on the effects of accent on second language listening comprehension (L2 LC). It is shown that some of the studies have been misinterpreted as indicating the existence of an own, or local, accent advantage in L2 listening. From the review, it is clear that there is insufficient evidence to support such conclusions. Given previous research findings and current state of knowledge concerning the LC process, it is hypothesised that different but familiar accents should cause no problems for L2 listeners. This hypothesis is tested in an experiment featuring 63 Hong Kong school students. The results support the hypothesis. From the findings, it is argued that degree of familiarity is the crucial issue with regard to whether a particular accent causes LC problems for L2 listeners to English. In contrast, whether or not a speaker's accent is similar to the listener's is a secondary issue, which is important only in so far as it relates to the issue of familiarity.link_to_subscribed_fulltex