Dislocation without movement: An ERP-study with wh- and scrambled sentences in Russian

Abstract:

In this paper, we will show that different types of argument dislocation are based on different underlying processes.  Using event-related brain potentials, we compared the effects of object-initial Wh-sentences to those of object-initial declaratives in Russian.  From a theoretical perspective, these types of dislocation can be dissociated in terms of potential movement operations of the fronted argument.  Whereas in Wh-sentences, like (1a), the object is moved from its base position to a position preceding the subject, every possible word order in scrambled sentences, illustrated by DO-Scrambling in (2a), is base generated (cf. Baylin, 1995).

In object-initial (1a) compared to subject initial (1b) Wh-sentences, we observed a negative shift with a centro-parietal maximum, starting with the processing of the first argument phrase (object), followed by a late positivity on the second argument (subject).  Whereas the negativity results from an identification of an initial filler, the positivity can be seen as additional evidence for an "integrational P600" (Kaan et al., 2000), which reflects the processes occurring during a costly integration of the filler at the first possible position (cf. Fiebach et al., 2001).  By contrast, object-initial (DO-Scrambling) declarative sentences (2a) elicited none of these components (and no other ERP effects either) compared to their unscrambled counterparts (2b).

The results suggest that processing difficulties associate with DO-Scrambling sentences result from a reconstruction of an underlying syntactic operation (movement) and do not reflect more general cognitive disadvantages, as for example, additional memory load, during processing sentences with a non-canonical marked word order.