| |
Abstract:
Abstract: The present auditory study aims at identifying ERP
correlates for the processing of both sentence accents as such and
their compatibility relative to a context question (information
structure). The employed German sentence material is based on that
introduced by Steinhauer, Alter and Friederici (1999) but varies
the positions of accents (as indicated by capitals). Moreover, all
sentences were preceded by context questions establishing a narrow
focus on one sentence constituent such that only the corresponding
accentuation pattern provided an appropriate answer: question: WHO
promises to help Anna and to clean the office? compatible answer:
(S1) PETER promises to help Anna and to clean the office.
incompatible answer: (S2) Peter promises to help ANNA and to clean
the office. Note that incompatible answers violate the required
information structure in two ways: (1) they do not provide the
required accent on the element in focus and (2) they contain an
inappropriate accent. 22 undergraduate students participated in
this experiment and judged the prosodic compatibility of questions
and answers. Preliminary ERP data suggest that in compatible
answers, lexical elements carrying the respective accent elicit a
centro-parietal positivity. The ERP patterns for incompatible
answers appears to be more complex. Depending on both the type of
violation and the position in the sentence we observed either a
negative slow wave or a biphasic sequence of components.
|
