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PURPOSE: According to most models of spoken word recognition, listeners probabilistically activate a set of lexical candidates, which is incrementally updated as the speech signal unfolds. Speech carries segmental (speech sound) as well as suprasegmental (prosodic) information. The role of the latter in spoken word recognition is less clear. We investigated how suprasegments (tone and voice quality) in three North Germanic language varieties affected lexical access by scrutinizing temporally fine-grained neurophysiological effects of lexical uncertainty and information gain.METHOD: Three event-related potential (ERP) studies were reanalyzed. In all varieties investigated, suprasegments are associated with specific word endings. Swedish has two lexical "word accents" realized as pitch falls with different timings across dialects. In Danish, the distinction is in voice quality. We combined pronunciation lexica and frequency lists to calculate estimates of lexical uncertainty about an unfolding word and information gain upon hearing a suprasegmental cue and the segment upon which it manifests. We used single-trial mixed-effects regression models run every 4 ms.RESULTS: Only lexical uncertainty showed solid results: a frontal effect at 150-400 ms after suprasegmental cue onset and a later posterior effect after 200 ms. While a model including only segmental information mostly performed better, it was outperformed by the suprasegmental model at 200-330 ms at frontal sites.CONCLUSIONS: The study points to suprasegmental cues contributing to lexical access over and beyond segments after around 200 ms in the North Germanic varieties investigated. Furthermore, the findings indicate that a previously reported "pre-activation negativity" predominantly reflects forward-looking processing.SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.25016486.

We propose that a recently discovered event-related potential (ERP) component—the pre-activation negativity (PrAN)—indexes the predictive strength of phonological cues, including segments, word tones, and sentence-level tones. Specifically, we argue that PrAN is a reflection of the brain’s anticipation of upcoming speech (segments, morphemes, words, and syntactic structures). Findings from a long series of neurolinguistic studies indicate that the effect can be divided into two time windows with different possible brain sources. Between 136 and 200 ms from stimulus onset, it indexes activity mainly in the primary and secondary auditory cortices, reflecting disinhibition of neurons sensitive to the expected acoustic signal, as indicated by the brain regions’ response to predictive certainty rather than sound salience. After ~200 ms, PrAN is related to activity in Broca’s area, possibly reflecting inhibition of irrelevant segments, morphemes, words, and syntactic structures.

The pre-activation negativity (PrAN) is an event-related potential (ERP) component indexing how constraining phonological cues are. It has an early phase (136-200 ms), with sources in the left auditory cortices, and a late phase (200 ms onwards), with sources in Broca’s area. The PrAN has been found for segmental and prosodic cues increasing the certainty about upcoming words, morphemes, grammatical structures, or lexicality. The phonological cues investigated have been Central Swedish, South Swedish, Danish, and English segmental phonemes, Central and South Swedish lexical tone accents, Danish stød, and Central Swedish boundary tones and left-edge boundary tones/initiality accents.

Swedish lexical word accents have been repeatedly said to have a lowfunctional load. Even so, the language has kept these tones ever sincethey emerged probably over a thousand years ago. This article proposesthat the primary function of word accents is for listeners to be ableto predict upcoming morphological structures and narrow down thelexical competition rather than being lexically distinctive. Psycho- andneurophysiological evidence for the predictive function of word accents isdiscussed. A novel analysis displays that word accents have a facilitativerole in word processing. Specifically, a correlation is revealed betweenhow much incorrect word accents hinder listeners’ processing and howmuch they reduce response times when correct. Finally, a dual-route modelof the predictive use of word accents with distinct neural substrates isput forth.

Falling pitch has long been argued to be a key feature in the distinction of Swedish pitch accents. In this paper, neurophysiological and behavioural evidence substantiating the perceptual importance of HL pitch contours at the word level is discussed. When presentedwith novel words, Swedes, regard-less of dialect,preattentively distinguished meaningfulwords with falling pitch.Falling pitch was also facilitative for tone mismatch detection.These responses tomeaningful HL contours in foreign words werelikely based on transfer from the native tongue, thus emphasisingthe importance of falling pitch in the discrimination of word accents in four Swedish dialectareas. However, while responses to falls were facilitated across dialects, additional dialect-dependent facilitation effects were found.

The N400 has been seen to be larger for concrete than abstract words, and for pseudowords than real words. Using a word vector analysis to calculate semantic associates (SA), as well as ratings for emotional arousal (EA), and a measure of orthographic neighbourhood (ON), the present study investigated the relation between these factors and N400 amplitudes during a lexical decision task using Swedish word stimuli. Four noun categories differing in concreteness: specific (squirrel), GENERAL (animal) emotional (happiness) and abstract (tendency) were compared with pseudowords (danalod). Results showed that N400 amplitudes increased in the order emotional < abstract < GENERAL < specific < PSEUDOWORD. A regression analysis showed that the amplitude of the N400 decreased the more semantic associates a word had and the higher the rating for emotional arousal it had. The N400 also increased the more orthographic neighbours a word had. Results provide support for the hierarchical organisation of concrete words assumed in lexical semantics. They also demonstrate how affective information facilitates meaning processing.

Mastering a new language (L2) implies the need to readjust the associations between different components (phonology, lexicon, grammar) in the native language (L1). L2 speakers have often been observed to apply prosodic patterns from their first language when processing a new language. Swedish speakers have been reported to produce a word melody that resembles accent 1 when speaking foreign languages. The present case study, using data from a speaker of Central Swedish, proposes a possible explanation for this ‘prosodic transfer’ phenomenon in terms of differences in alignment of metrical, tonal, and morphosyntactic patterns in Swedish and English and analyses empirical data from this perspective.

This article proposes a Dual Complexity Gradient theory of speech perception in the brain. The theory unifies a previously proposed phonetic-to-phonological complexity gradient along the ventral auditory processing stream in the temporal lobe with a recently suggested cortical structure complexity gradient. Findings supporting the theory are discussed as well as its predictions.

Listeners are constantly trying to predict what the speaker will say next. We concurrently measured the electrophysiological and haemodynamic correlates of syntactic pre-activation, investigating when and where the brain processes speech melody cues to upcoming word order structure. Pre-activation of syntactic structure was reflected in a left-lateralised pre-activation negativity (PrAN), which was subserved by Broca’s area in the left inferior frontal gyrus, as well as the contiguous left anterior insula.