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Abstract:
Previous ERP studies on lexical features have mainly pursued
two lines of research. (1.) The majority have examined specific
features employing the 'violation paradigm'. Conceptual-semantic
violations (e.g. the animacy violation in "the marmalade was
murdered") yield centro-parietal N400 components; syntactic
violations ("the marmalade was eat") produce left anterior
negativities (LANs) and P600s. (2.) Most 'NON-violation' studies
have focused on the gross distinction between (meaning-bearing)
content words and (grammatical) function words, reporting larger
N400s for content words and LAN-like negativities for function
words. We investigated the processing of one specific lexical
feature WITHOUT employing violations. The mass/count feature
distinguishes between countable nouns (e.g. "table(s)") and mass
nouns ("little/much rice"). This mass/count distinction has been
controversially discussed in terms of either syntactic or
conceptual differences. Twenty-six subjects read sentences
containing either mass or count nouns. Count (vs. mass) nouns
elicited a frontal negativity which was independent of the
centro-parietal N400 marker for conceptual processing tested in the
same experiment, but resembles LAN-like anterior negativities
related to grammatical processing. This finding suggests that the
brain differentiates between count and mass nouns primarily on a
non-conceptual and probably on a syntactic basis. Moreover, the
data show that ERPs can reflect the processing of specific lexical
features, even in the absence of any feature-related
violations.
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