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Abstract:
We address the question how syntactic and prosodic factors
interact during auditory language comprehension. Previous studies
using ERPs have revealed that syntactic phrase structure violations
elicit an early left anterior negativity followed by a late
posterior positivity. In our experiments we investigated whether
prosodic information can modulate the syntactic processes
underlying these components. Compared to control sentences,
sentences containing a phrase structure error elicited both
ERP-components. When the same sentences were spoken in a
non-canonical prosodic form (including a strongly stressed
preposition) both components disappeared suggesting that the
prosodic anomaly blocked further syntactic processing. However,
after 'normalizing' the prosodic pattern by presenting an
introductory question focusing on that preposition (thereby
requiring it to be stressed), we again observed the standard
ERP-pattern, although the topography of the early negativity
component was slightly different. These data suggest that the
initiation of early parsing processes depends on the prosodic
well-formedness of the sentence in context.
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