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Abstract:
Previous studies showed an event related potential the
Closure Postive Shift (CPS; Steinhauer et al., 1999), to be
corresponding to the processing of intonational phrase boundaries
(IPh) on single sentence level. The experiments we present here
aimed on investigating the influence of information structure (IS)
on prosodic processing and hence, on the CPS. ERP measurements were
obtained while sentences were auditorily presented (a) with a
preceding context question and (b) in isolation: According to the
theory of IS new information is prosodically triggered by an accent
on the focussed constituents. In (a) narrow focused sentences were
presented after an embedding context question. ERP data indicate
that the comprehension process is triggered by obtaining the new
information and that this process overrides syntactic analysis;
surprisingly no CPS occurs at intonational phrase boundaries. To
prove the influence of context information the answer sentences of
(a) were presented in isolation without the preceding context
question and in combination with neutrally intonated sentences (b).
ERP data show that listeners switch from processing accented
information to syntactically driven processing; the CPS occurs
again. Our explanation for the results in this experiments is that
the processing of focussed accent positions and IPh boundaries
relies strongly on the presence of context information.
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