Search

Abstract: This study uses event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate the temporal sequencing of structural (grammatical) and lexical (semantic) properties of complex words during language comprehension. Morphologically complex words do not only consist of stems and affixes (e.g., ‘feel’+‘-s’), but affixes also contain grammatical structure, viz. feature bundles specifying their morpho-syntactic functions (e.g., -s= [3rd person, singular, present tense]). We examined inflected adjectives of German, which consist of an unaltered stem plus a portmanteau affix encoding case, number and gender. The same group of 24 adult native speakers was tested in two cross-modal ERP priming experiments separately studying effects of lexical–semantic relatedness and related affixes. The results of these experiments revealed clearly distinct brain potentials. Prime-target overlap with respect to morpho-syntactic features was associated with a reduced positivity, whereas lexical-level priming led to a reduced negativity. The former was most pronounced between 200 and 300ms and the latter in a later time window, between 300 and 400ms. We interpret the reduced early positivity as reflecting ease of grammatical processing effort in case of primed (relative to unprimed) morpho-syntactic features and the reduced negativity as signaling facilitation in lexical retrieval for primed (compared to unprimed) words. Our ERP results indicate that grammatical information becomes available earlier than semantic information providing support for structure-first models of language processing. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A critical issue for understanding language processing in the brain is whether linguistic rule application is subserved by a distinct neural substrate. One of the evidence supporting this hypothesis stems from studies employing electroencephalographic measurements during the processing of rule misapplication. This evidence is inconclusive because it might reflect processes caused by the violation such as error handling rather than application of rules per se. Here we provide first evidence that correct regular formations, i.e., German past participles, are associated with left anterior negative-going activity (LAN) providing encephalographic evidence for rule application in the brain during the processing of correct words. Moreover, a LAN response is present regardless of the participles’ frequency, suggesting that independently from the mode of lexical access (i.e., decomposition or full-form activation), the cerebral structures associated with rule-based mechanisms are activated. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Results indicating that high stem tones realizing word accents activate a certain class of suffixes in online processing of Central Swedish are presented. This supports the view that high Swedish word accent tones are induced onto word stems by particular suffixes rather than being associated with words in the mental lexicon. Using event-related potentials, effects of mismatch between word accents and inflectional suffixes were compared with mismatches between stem and suffix in terms of declension class. Declensionally incorrect suffixes yielded an increase in the N400, indicating problems in lexical retrieval, as well as a P600 effect, showing reanalysis. Both declensionally correct and incorrect high tone-inducing (Accent 2) suffixes combined with a mismatching low tone (Accent 1) on the stems produced P600 effects, but did not increase the N400. Suffixes usually co-occurring with Accent 1 did not yield any effects in words realized with the nonmatching Accent 2, suggesting that Accent 1 is a default accent, lacking association with any particular suffix. High tones on Accent 2 words also produced an early anterior positivity, interpreted as a P200 effect reflecting preattentive processing of the tone. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The aim of the study was to investigate how the input modality affects the processing of a morphologically complex word. The processing of Finnish inflected vs. monomorphemic words and pseudowords was examined during a lexical decision task, using behavioral responses and event-related potentials. The stimuli were presented in two modalities, visually and auditorily, to two groups of participants. Half of the words and pseudowords carried a case-inflection. At the behavioral level, the inflected words elicited a processing cost with longer decision latencies and higher error rates. At the neural level, pseudowords elicited an N400 effect, which was more pronounced in the visual modality. Inflected words elicited an N400 effect in both modalities, which, however, differed in topography and latency. The N400 effect for inflected words most probably reflects access and possible integration of the stem and suffix. The results suggest that the inflectional processing cost stems from the later, lexical-semantic stage of processing in both modalities. The ERP responses to inflected pseudowords did not differ from the ERP responses to monomorphemic pseudowords in either modality, suggesting that combinatorial case-inflection processing requires a real word stem in order to proceed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Event-related potentials (ERP) were used to investigate the electrophysiological correlates of inflectional and derivational morphology. The participants were presented with visual sentences containing critical words in which either inflectional, derivational or both rules (combined violation) of Finnish were violated. Inflectional anomalies violated a number agreement of a noun with a previous auxiliary word. Derivational violations included a word-internal selectional restriction violation, i.e., a root and suffix category violation. Combined violations contained both a number and a category violation. The phonemic length of the critical words was controlled. Inflectional violations elicited a bilateral negative effect in the 450–550 ms time window, which was interpreted as an anterior negativity (AN) effect. Inflectional violations also elicited a late positivity (P600) effect. Derivational violations elicited an N400-like negativity effect, followed by the P600 effect. The P600 effects in the derivational and inflectional violation conditions summated linearly in the combined violation condition. The results are discussed with respect to the hypothesis that inflectional and derivational processes are independent and elicited in parallel in the online language comprehension. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]