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Abstract:
Abstract: In this study the N400 was used to identify the
time course of the selection of the contextually appropriate
reading of ambiguous words (e.g., bark) whose different meanings
are associated to a different form class. Subjects were presented
with naturally produced spoken sentences in four context
conditions, followed by the same target word. Sentence contexts
were semantically neutral but syntactically constraining. For
example (Note: Target words are in capitals): Concordant/Concordant
Control: The blind man ran his hands across the bark/silk TREE;
Discordant/Discordant Control: Without apparent reason they started
to bark/shiver TREE. In the concordant condition, the sentence
context biased the reading of the sentence final ambiguous word
that was related to the target. In the discordant condition the
sentence context biased the reading of the sentence final ambiguous
word that was incompatible with the target. In the concordant and
discordant control conditions, the sentence final words were not
ambiguous and were unrelated to the target. The selectional status
of the ambiguous sentence final words was inferred from the
amplitude of the N400 to the sentence final words and the target
words. The pattern of N400 results showed that both the
contextually appropriate and the contextually inappropriate
readings of noun-verb ambiguities were activated, and that the
contextual selection process was not yet completed 100 ms after the
offset of the sentence final words. These results argue against the
idea that resolution of noun-verb ambiguities can be guided by the
syntactic structure of the sentence alone.
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