The Interplay between Prosody and Syntax in Sentence Processing: The Case of Subject- and Object-control Verbs

• Published in: Journal of cognitive neuroscience Vol. 22; no. 5; pp. 1036 - 1053
• Main Authors: Bögels, Sara, Schriefers, Herbert, Vonk, Wietske, Chwilla, Dorothee J., Kerkhofs, Roel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: One Rogers Street, Cambridge, MA 02142-1209, USA MIT Press 01.05.2010; MIT Press Journals, The
• Subjects: Acoustic Stimulation - methods; Ambiguity; Analysis of Variance; Auditory Processing; Brain Mapping; Cognition & reasoning; Dutch; Electroencephalography - methods; Evoked Potentials - physiology; Female; Humans; Language; Language disorders; Language Processing; Male; Neurosciences; Photic Stimulation - methods; Prosody; Psycholinguistics - methods; Reaction Time - physiology; Semantics; Sentences; Speech Perception - physiology; Studies; Syntactic Structures; Syntax Phonology Relationship; Valence; Verbal Behavior - physiology; Verbs; Vocabulary; Young Adult
• ISSN: 0898-929X; 1530-8898; 1530-8898
• DOI: 10.1162/jocn.2009.21269

This study addresses the question whether prosodic information can affect the choice for a syntactic analysis in auditory sentence processing. We manipulated the prosody (in the form of a prosodic break; PB) of locally ambiguous Dutch sentences to favor one of two interpretations. The experimental items contained two different types of so-called control verbs (subject and object control) in the matrix clause and were syntactically disambiguated by a transitive or by an intransitive verb. In Experiment 1, we established the default off-line preference of the items for a transitive or an intransitive disambiguating verb with a visual and an auditory fragment completion test. The results suggested that subject- and object-control verbs differently affect the syntactic structure that listeners expect. In Experiment 2, we investigated these two types of verbs separately in an on-line ERP study. Consistent with the literature, the PB elicited a closure positive shift. Furthermore, in subject-control items, an N400 effect for intransitive relative to transitive disambiguating verbs was found, both for sentences with and for sentences without a PB. This result suggests that the default preference for subject-control verbs goes in the same direction as the effect of the PB. In object-control items, an N400 effect for intransitive relative to transitive disambiguating verbs was found for sentences with a PB but no effect in the absence of a PB. This indicates that a PB can affect the syntactic analysis that listeners pursue.