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Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

May 2010, Vol. 22, No. 5, Pages 1036-1053
Posted Online March 4, 2010.
(doi:10.1162/jocn.2009.21269)
© 2009 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Interplay between Prosody and Syntax in Sentence Processing: The Case of Subject- and Object-control Verbs

Sara Bögels1, Herbert Schriefers1, Wietske Vonk1,2, Dorothee J. Chwilla1, and Roel Kerkhofs1

1Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands

2Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

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This study addresses the question whether prosodic information can affect the choice for a syntactic analysis in auditory sentence processing. We manipulated the prosody (in the form of a prosodic break; PB) of locally ambiguous Dutch sentences to favor one of two interpretations. The experimental items contained two different types of so-called control verbs (subject and object control) in the matrix clause and were syntactically disambiguated by a transitive or by an intransitive verb. In Experiment 1, we established the default off-line preference of the items for a transitive or an intransitive disambiguating verb with a visual and an auditory fragment completion test. The results suggested that subject- and object-control verbs differently affect the syntactic structure that listeners expect. In Experiment 2, we investigated these two types of verbs separately in an on-line ERP study. Consistent with the literature, the PB elicited a closure positive shift. Furthermore, in subject-control items, an N400 effect for intransitive relative to transitive disambiguating verbs was found, both for sentences with and for sentences without a PB. This result suggests that the default preference for subject-control verbs goes in the same direction as the effect of the PB. In object-control items, an N400 effect for intransitive relative to transitive disambiguating verbs was found for sentences with a PB but no effect in the absence of a PB. This indicates that a PB can affect the syntactic analysis that listeners pursue.

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Efrat Pauker, Inbal Itzhak, Shari R. Baum, Karsten Steinhauer. (2011) Effects of Cooperating and Conflicting Prosody in Spoken English Garden Path Sentences: ERP Evidence for the Boundary Deletion Hypothesis. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 23:10, 2731-2751
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Sara Bögels, Herbert Schriefers, Wietske Vonk, Dorothee J. Chwilla. (2011) The Role of Prosodic Breaks and Pitch Accents in Grouping Words during On-line Sentence Processing. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 23:9, 2447-2467
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Sara Bögels, Herbert Schriefers, Wietske Vonk, Dorothee J. Chwilla. (2011) Pitch accents in context: How listeners process accentuation in referential communication. Neuropsychologia 49:7, 2022-2036
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Sara Bögels, Herbert Schriefers, Wietske Vonk, Dorothee J. Chwilla. (2011) Prosodic Breaks in Sentence Processing Investigated by Event-Related Potentials : Prosodic Breaks in Sentence Processing. Language and Linguistics Compass 5:7, 424
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