An ERP study of syntactic processing in English and nonsense sentences

Yamada, Yasuhiko; Neville, Helen J.

doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2006.10.052

Cited by 46 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 59 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Critically, however, when there is no clear alternative to which the flawed input could be corrected, no P600 component is observed, as in the case of the "classical" semantic anomalies (31), or in Jabberwocky materials in which plausibility cues are absent (e.g., ref. 41). In some cases in which a correction is unlikely, a P600 has nonetheless been reported (e.g., refs.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rational integration of noisy evidence and prior semantic expectations in sentence interpretation

Gibson

Bergen²,

Piantadosi

2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

317

452

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Sentence processing theories typically assume that the input to our language processing mechanisms is an error-free sequence of words. However, this assumption is an oversimplification because noise is present in typical language use (for instance, due to a noisy environment, producer errors, or perceiver errors). A complete theory of human sentence comprehension therefore needs to explain how humans understand language given imperfect input. Indeed, like many cognitive systems, language processing mechanisms may even be "well designed"-in this case for the task of recovering intended meaning from noisy utterances. In particular, comprehension mechanisms may be sensitive to the types of information that an idealized statistical comprehender would be sensitive to. Here, we evaluate four predictions about such a rational (Bayesian) noisy-channel language comprehender in a sentence comprehension task: (i) semantic cues should pull sentence interpretation towards plausible meanings, especially if the wording of the more plausible meaning is close to the observed utterance in terms of the number of edits; (ii) this process should asymmetrically treat insertions and deletions due to the Bayesian "size principle"; such nonliteral interpretation of sentences should (iii) increase with the perceived noise rate of the communicative situation and (iv) decrease if semantically anomalous meanings are more likely to be communicated. These predictions are borne out, strongly suggesting that human language relies on rational statistical inference over a noisy channel.T raditionally, models of sentence comprehension have assumed that the input to the sentence comprehension mechanism is an error-free sequence of words (e.g., refs. 1-6). However, the noise inherent in normal language use-due to producer or perceiver errors-makes this assumption an oversimplification. For example, language producers may misspeak or mistype because they do not have a full command of the language (due to being very young or a nonnative speaker, or suffering from a language disorder like aphasia), because they have not fully planned an utterance in advance, or because they are trying to communicate under the influence of stress or confusion. Similarly, language comprehenders may mishear or misread things because of their own handicaps (e.g., poor hearing/sight, or not paying sufficient attention), because the environment is noisy, or because the producer is not making sufficient effort in communicating clearly (e.g., whispering or mumbling, or writing in sloppy handwriting). Given the prevalence of these noise sources, it is plausible that language processing mechanisms are well adapted to handling noisy input, and so a complete model of language comprehension must allow for the existence of noise.Noisy-channel models (7) of speech perception have been prominent in the literature for many years (e.g., 8-11). Furthermore, several researchers have observed the importance of noise in the input for the compositional, syntactic processes of sentence unders...

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rational integration of noisy evidence and prior semantic expectations in sentence interpretation

Gibson

Bergen²,

Piantadosi

2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

317

452

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Several studies have reported an anterior negativity which is more bilateral in distribution (e.g., Friederici & Frisch, 2000; Friederici & Meyer, 2004; Friederici, et al, 1993; Frisch, Hahne, & Friederici, 2004; Hagoort, et al, 2003; Hahne, 2001; Hahne & Friederici, 1999, 2002; Hahne & Jescheniak, 2001; Münte, et al, 1997; Rossi, et al, 2006; Yamada & Neville, 2007; Ye, Luo, Friederici, & Zhou, 2006). To date no theory of language processing has sought to address the functional significance of these differences in distribution, although the question has been identified as an important one for future research (Hahne & Friederici, 2002).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One of these is a negative-going wave, typically larger over left anterior electrode sites between 100-500 ms, known as the left anterior negativity (LAN). The LAN has been elicited by a variety of syntactic violation types, such as phrase structure violations (Friederici, et al, 1993; Gunter, Friederici, & Hahne, 1999; Hahne & Friederici, 1999; Neville, Nicol, Barss, Forster, & Garrett, 1991; Yamada & Neville, 2007) and morphosyntactic violations (Coulson, King, & Kutas, 1998a; Friederici, et al, 1993; Münte, Heinze, & Mangun, 1993). The LAN typically occurs in one or both of two time windows (100-300 ms and 300-500 ms), which has lead some researchers to propose the existence of two distinct, separate components, with the first, termed the early left anterior negativity (ELAN), indexing processes different from those indexed by the second, LAN (Friederici, 1995; Friederici & Mecklinger, 1996; Hahne & Jescheniak, 2001).…”

Section: Erp Studies Of Language Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Proficiency Differences in Syntactic Processing of Monolingual Native Speakers Indexed by Event-related Potentials

Pakulak

Neville²

2010

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

Self Cite

152

117

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

While anecdotally there appear to be differences in the way native speakers use and comprehend their native language, most empirical investigations of language processing study university students and none have studied differences in language proficiency which may be independent of resource limitations such as working memory span. We examined differences in language proficiency in adult monolingual native speakers of English using an event-related potential (ERP) paradigm. ERPs were recorded to insertion phrase structure violations in naturally spoken English sentences. Participants recruited from a wide spectrum of society were given standardized measures of English language proficiency, and two complementary ERP analyses were performed. In between-groups analyses, participants were divided, based on standardized proficiency scores, into Lower Proficiency (LP) and Higher Proficiency (HP) groups. Compared to LP participants, HP participants showed an early anterior negativity that was more focal, both spatially and temporally, and a larger and more widely distributed positivity (P600) to violations. In correlational analyses, we utilized a wide spectrum of proficiency scores to examine the degree to which individual proficiency scores correlated with individual neural responses to syntactic violations in regions and time windows identified in the between-group analyses. This approach also employed partial correlation analyses to control for possible confounding variables. These analyses provided evidence for the effects of proficiency that converged with the between-groups analyses. These results suggest that adult monolingual native speakers of English who vary in language proficiency differ in the recruitment of syntactic processes that are hypothesized to be at least in part automatic as well as of those thought to be more controlled. These results also suggest that in order to fully characterize neural organization for language in native speakers it is necessary to include participants of varying proficiency.Anecdotally, it appears that there exist differences in the way native speakers use and comprehend their native language. Beginning with Chomsky's (1965) claim that linguistic theory should be concerned with an ideal speaker-listener with perfect linguistic knowledge, differences in linguistic proficiency among native speakers have often been assumed to be the result of resource limitations or performance errors considered to be independent of and irrelevant to grammatical knowledge. Numerous studies of bilinguals, young children, children with specific language impairment, and deaf adults have found that event-related potentials (ERPs) are sensitive to differences in language proficiency (Mills,

show abstract

“…Some research suggested that this component is primarily elicited by the inclusion of a grammaticality judgment task (Kuperberg, 2003, Yamada & Neville, 2007), or a monitoring process triggered by a conflict, e.g. when an unexpected linguistic item is encountered where another item is highly expected (Kolk et al, 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

ERP evidence for telicity effects on syntactic processing in garden-path sentences

2009

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Verbs contain multifaceted information about both the semantics of an action, and potential argument structures. Linguistic theory classifies verbs according to whether the denoted action has an inherent (telic) end-point (fall, awaken), or whether it is considered homogenous, or atelic (read, worship). The aim of our study was to examine how this distinction influences online sentence processing, investigating the effects of verbal telicity on the ease of syntactic re-analysis of Object reduced relative clauses. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 22 English speakers as they read sentences in which the main verb was either telic or atelic, e.g., "The actress awakened/ worshippedby the writer left in a hurry". ERPs elicited by telic and atelic verbs, the preposition "by" introducing the second argument (Agent), and the second argument itself, e.g., "writer", were compared. Additionally, participants were grouped according to receptive syntactic proficiency: normal (NP) or high (HP). ERPs from the NP group first diverged at the second argument, with the atelic condition eliciting larger amplitude negativity at the N100, and continuing to the P200 interval. In contrast, ERPs from the HP group first diverged earlier in the sentence, on the word "by". ERPs elicited by "by" in the atelic condition were also characterized by increased negativity, in this case significant at P200 and Anterior Negativity between 320-500ms post stimulus onset. Our results support the postulated conceptual/semantic distinction underlying the two verb categories, and demonstrate that world-knowledge about actions designated by verbs and syntactic proficiency are reflected in on-line processing of sentence structure.

show abstract

An ERP study of syntactic processing in English and nonsense sentences

Cited by 46 publications

References 59 publications

Rational integration of noisy evidence and prior semantic expectations in sentence interpretation

Rational integration of noisy evidence and prior semantic expectations in sentence interpretation

Proficiency Differences in Syntactic Processing of Monolingual Native Speakers Indexed by Event-related Potentials

ERP evidence for telicity effects on syntactic processing in garden-path sentences

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About