When Events Change Their Nature: The Neurocognitive Mechanisms Underlying Aspectual Coercion

Abstract

The verb ‘pounce’ describes a single, near-instantaneous event. Yet, we easily understand that, “For several minutes the cat pounced…” describes a situation in which multiple pounces occurred, even though this interpretation is not overtly specified by the sentence’s syntactic structure or by any of its individual words—a phenomenon known as ‘aspectual coercion’. Previous psycholinguistic studies have reported processing costs in association with aspectual coercion, but the neurocognitive mechanisms giving rise to these costs remain contentious. Additionally, there is some controversy about whether readers commit to a full interpretation of the event when the aspectual information becomes available, or whether they leave it temporarily underspecified until later in the sentence. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we addressed these questions in a design that fully crossed context type (punctive, durative, frequentative) with verb type (punctive, durative). We found a late, sustained negativity to punctive verbs in durative contexts, but not in frequentative (e.g. explicitly iterative) contexts. This effect was distinct from the N400 in both its time course and scalp distribution, suggesting that it reflected a different underlying neurocognitive mechanism. We also found that ERPs to durative verbs were unaffected by context type. Together, our results provide strong evidence that neural activity associated with aspectual coercion is driven by the engagement of a morphosyntactically unrealized semantic operator rather than by violations of real-world knowledge, more general shifts in event representation, or event iterativity itself. More generally, our results add to a growing body of evidence that a set of late-onset sustained negativities reflect elaborative semantic processing that goes beyond simply combining the meaning of individual words with syntactic structure to arrive at a final representation of meaning.

The difference between “giving a rose” and “giving a kiss”: Sustained neural activity to the light verb construction

“…This might manifest as a late sustained negativity effect, similar to that previously observed in association with complex semantic operations involving the maintenance, computation and/or selection of non-canonical event structure representations within working memory (e.g. Baggio, Van Lambalgen, & Hagoort, 2008; Bott, 2010; Paczynski, Jackendoff, & Kuperberg, in press). …”

“…And, in a recent study, we observed a late-onset sustained negativity effect in association with iterative aspectual coercion, in which a punctive action (e.g. pounce) must be repeated for a period of time, specified by the preceding context (Paczynski, Jackendoff, & Kuperberg, in press). We will return to a more complete analysis of these studies in the Discussion section.…”

“…First, Baggio, Van Lambalgen, and Hagoort (2008) reported a sustained anteriorly distributed negativity effect, beginning at approximately 450 ms after the onset of a verb that implied the interruption of an ongoing event, e.g. original Dutch: “Het meisje was een brief aan het schrijven toen haar vriendin koffie op het papier (vs. tafelkleed) morste”; English translation: “The girl was writing a letter when her friend spilled coffee on the paper (vs. tablecloth)” (Paczynski, Jackendoff, & Kuperberg, in press). In this sentence, full integration of the verb establishes that the ongoing event (writing a letter) was not completed because coffee was spilled on the paper (rather than on the tablecloth).…”

Percepção do tempo: da psicologia para a psicolinguística

“…Outros experimentos também corroboram a hipó-tese da coerção iterativa utilizando diferentes métodos como rastreamento ocular (TOWNSEND, 2012), leitura auto monitorada (CHAN, 2013) e EEG (PACZYNSKI et al, 2014;YANO, 2016; BŁASZCZAK e KLIMEK-JANKOWSKA, a aparecer).…”

“…Uma versão prévia também foi apresentada no congresso Scientiarum Historia VIII na UFRJ. KUPERBERG, 2014;YANO, 2016; BŁASZCZAK, KLIMEK-JANKOWSKA, a aparecer) e magnetoencefalografia (BRENNAN, PYLKKÄNEN, 2008). Visto que as propriedades em conflito no processamento deste tipo de sentença são conhecidas dos estudos do aspecto lexical (aktionsart) -a pontualidade do evento [pular] e a duratividade do contexto [por alguns minutos] -o fenômeno foi batizado com o nome Coerção Aspectual (PUSTEJOVSKY, 1995;JACKENDOFF, 1997).…”