Incremental structure building of preverbal PPs in Dutch

Coopmans, Cas W.; Schoenmakers, Gert-Jan

doi:10.1075/avt.00036.coo

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…to demand a raise), compared to for a month, which is a temporal adjunct to the verb considered. This example also illustrates the role of the head (here, demands) in syntactic processing, which allows syntactic structure to be projected (as in head-driven parsing models 40,45 ) and can trigger expectations for upcoming linguistic material 41,44,46 . Moreover, cross-linguistic differences in head position modulate sentence-processing effects.…”

Section: The Present Studymentioning

confidence: 90%

“…Consistently head-initial phrases were tracked more closely than sequences with varying head position (effect of head position). The tracking difference between these conditions can be explained in terms of different positions of the grammatical head, which determines the syntactic status of the phrase and guides syntactic processing 40,41,[44][45][46] . We find the head-position effect intriguing because it shows that the brain accomplishes a seemingly dichotomous task, namely tracking abstract linguistic structure while preserving structural detail.…”

Section: Tracking Structural Regularitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Structural and sequential regularities modulate phrase-rate neural tracking

Zhao,

Martin,

Coopmans

2024

Preprint

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Electrophysiological brain activity has been shown to synchronize with the quasi-regular repetition of grammatical phrases in connected speech (so-called phrase-rate neural tracking). Current debate centers around whether this phenomenon is best explained in terms of the syntactic properties of phrases or in terms of syntax-external information, such as the sequential repetition of parts of speech. As these two factors were confounded in previous studies, much of the literature is compatible with both accounts. Here, we used electroencephalography (EEG) to determine if and when the brain is sensitive to both types of information. Twenty native speakers of Mandarin Chinese listened to isochronously presented streams of monosyllabic words, which contained either grammatical two-word phrases (e.g., catch fish, sell house) or non-grammatical word combinations (e.g., full lend, bread far). Within the grammatical conditions, we varied two structural factors: the position of the head of each phrase and the type of attachment. Within the non-grammatical conditions, we varied the consistency with which parts of speech were repeated. Tracking was quantified through evoked power and inter-trial phase coherence, both derived from the frequency-domain representation of EEG responses. As expected, neural tracking at the phrase rate was stronger in grammatical sequences than in non-grammatical sequences without syntactic structure. Moreover, it was modulated by both attachment type and head position, revealing the structure-sensitivity of phrase-rate tracking. We additionally found that the brain tracks the repetition of parts of speech in non-grammatical sequences. These data provide an integrative perspective on the current debate about neural tracking effects, revealing that the brain utilizes regularities computed over multiple levels of linguistic representation in guiding rhythmic computation.

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Section: The Present Studymentioning

confidence: 90%

Section: Tracking Structural Regularitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Structural and sequential regularities modulate phrase-rate neural tracking

Zhao,

Martin,

Coopmans

2024

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…The left-corner method predicts that the VP constituent in Dutch will be projected only after the entire preverbal NP complement has been processed. This is unrealistically late, in particular if speakers of head-final languages adopt incremental or even predictive parsing strategies (Coopmans & Schoenmakers, 2020; Vasishth et al, 2010). It might thus very well be that left-corner parsing is not the best strategy for Dutch structures.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural dynamics express syntax in the time domain during natural story listening

Coopmans,

de Hoop,

Tezcan

et al. 2024

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Studies of perception have long shown that the brain adds information to its sensory analysis of the physical environment. A touchstone example for humans is language use: to comprehend a physical signal like speech, the brain must add linguistic knowledge, including syntax. Yet, syntactic rules and representations are atemporal (i.e., abstract and not bound by time), so they must be translated into time-varying signals for speech comprehension and production. Here, we test three different models of the temporal spell-out of syntactic structure against brain activity of people listening to Dutch stories: an integratory bottom-up parser, a predictive top-down parser, and a mildly predictive left-corner parser. These models build exactly the same structure but differ in when syntactic information is added by the brain - this difference is captured in the (temporal distribution of the) complexity metric 'incremental node count'. Using temporal response function models with both acoustic and information-theoretic control predictors, node counts were regressed against source-reconstructed delta-band activity acquired with magnetoencephalography. Neural dynamics in left frontal and temporal regions most strongly reflect node counts derived by the top-down method, which postulates syntax early in time, suggesting that predictive structure building is an important component of Dutch sentence comprehension. The absence of strong effects of the left-corner model further suggests that its mildly predictive strategy does not represent Dutch language comprehension well, in contrast to what has been found for English. Understanding when the brain projects its knowledge of syntax onto speech, and whether this is done in language-specific ways, will inform and constrain the development of mechanistic models of syntactic-structure building in the brain.

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