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Abstract:
Abstract: This research focuses on the activation and
integration of prosodic, syntactic, and semantic information during
the comprehension of spoken sentences. The moments in time at which
these distinct sources of information become available, and the
manner in which they affect the comprehension process, provide
important information on the basic processing architecture of the
human language system. ERPs were recorded whilst subjects listened
to sentences in Dutch that were temporarily syntactically ambiguous
between two grammatical structures. Each of these structures is
associated with a distinct prosodic profile in spoken Dutch. In the
experiment, subjects listened to sentences with prosodic profiles
that either matched or mismatched with a particular syntactic
analysis. In addition, the sentences were either semantically
neutral with respect to the syntactic assignment, or contained a
semantic bias towards one analysis. The waveforms show an early and
quite distinct electrophysiological profile for the prosodic
manipulation. The results indicate that prosodic and semantic
information can have an early impact on syntactic processing,
overriding default preferences for a specific structural
analysis.
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