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Event-Related Brain Potentials and Case Information in Syntactic Ambiguities

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Event-Related Brain Potentials and Case Information in Syntactic Ambiguities Event-Related Brain Potentials and Case Information in Syntactic Ambiguities Jens-Max Hopf, Josef Bayer, Markus Bader, and Michael Meng Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany Downloaded from http://mitprc.silverchair.com/jocn/article-pdf/10/2/264/1758308/089892998562690.pdf by guest on 18 May 2021 Abstract ■ In an ERP study, German sentences were investigated that neuropsychological correlates. The results of this study support contain a case-ambiguous NP that may be assigned accusative a parser design according to which the so-called structural case or dative case. Sentences were disambiguated by the verb in (nominative or accusative) is assigned without any delay in the ªnal position of the sentence. As our data show, sentences absence of morpho-lexical counterevidence. It is argued that ending in a verb that assigns dative case to the ambiguous NP the enhancement of a negative ERP component with a “classi- elicit a clear garden-path effect. The garden-path effect was cal” N400 topography reºects the difªculty of reanalysis due indicated by a broad centro-posterior negative shift that oc- to reaccessing morpho-lexical information that lies outside the curred between 300 and 900 msec after the dative-assigning domain of the parsing module. Consequently, ERP responses to verb was presented. No enhanced P600 following the misana- garden-path effects are not conªned to a late positivity but vary lysis was observed. Noun phrases whose case ambiguity was depending on the level of processing involved in reanalysis. resolved in favor of accusative case and unambiguously dative- The fact that garden-path effects may also elicit an N400 can marked NPs did not trigger signiªcant ERP differences. We will be linked to the nonhomogeneous linguistic properties of the discuss the implications of our results for parsing and its constructions from which they arise. ■ INTRODUCTION syntactic ambiguities may lead to processing disruptions at the point of disambiguation, a phenomenon known as Parsing and Garden-Path Sentences garden-path effect. As has been argued by Frazier (1978), In order to successfully understand spoken or written the mere existence of garden-path effects imposes con- language, different types of information, linguistic as well straints on the way in which the parser may handle as nonlinguistic, have to be combined to derive the ambiguities and thus severely restricts the class of psy- message that an utterance encodes. One of the great chologically plausible parsers. challenges in the study of the human sentence process- Garden-path effects indicate that alternative structural ing mechanism (HSPM) is to ªnd out how different types continuations that arise at a point of ambiguity are not of information are used on-line. From the perspective of assigned equal priority but that there is one privileged processing, there is a question about the point at which, continuation that the parser prefers to pursue while the in the comprehension process, speciªc pieces of infor- other possibilities are neglected. Consider the following mation come into play and how they constrain each example, which is drawn from Frazier (1978): other. With respect to the neuropsychological correlates (1) Without her contributions . of processing, this relates to the problem of whether the (2) a. #[S’[PP Without her] [S contributions failed to employment of different information types can also be come in]] distinguished by virtue of the brain’s responses. b. [S’ [PP Without her contributions] [S noth- To study the time course of processing, much research ing has been aimed at specifying how the HSPM copes with would come in]] the problem of ambiguity (i.e., the fact that the input is often not sufªciently rich to be assigned a unique repre- Given the fragment in (1), the noun contributions may sentation). Ambiguities may arise at all levels of the com- be attached in different ways. It may be part of the initial prehension process, but research into ambiguity prepositional phrase. This attachment is compatible with resolution has proven to be especially fruitful in the area the continuation in (2b). On the other hand, contribu- of parsing. Parsing refers to the process during which a tions could function as an independent noun phrase that syntactic representation is assigned to an input string of is part of the following constituent, an attachment forced words. The special interest that ambiguities have re- in (2a). As the processing difference between (2a) and ceived in parsing is due to the fact that temporary (2b) suggests, the parser prefers an attachment of contri- © 1998 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 10:2, pp. 264–280 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/089892998562690 by guest on 25 September 2021 bution into the prepositional phrase (PP) as in (2b) and the fact that the phasic nature of cortical potential neglects the attachment possibility that is required in (2a). changes provides a unique opportunity to disentangle In serial models of parsing, the preferred structure is fast and sometimes hidden cognitive processes that oc- the only structure that the parser actually computes, cur at different levels of processing without confound- with all alternatives being discarded (Frazier, 1978; Fra- ing them with the preparation and execution of overt zier & Rayner, 1982). Parallel models that hold that the responses. parser computes all alternatives available usually invoke Kutas and Hillyard (1980) were the ªrst to show the concept of ranking to explain the processing asym- reliable variations of an ERP component (N400) to the metries: The preferred structure is ranked highest and ªnal word of a sentence that violates semantic con- thus is most accessible to the parser (Gibson, 1991; straints of the sentence. This N400, a negative-going com- Downloaded from http://mitprc.silverchair.com/jocn/article-pdf/10/2/264/1758308/089892998562690.pdf by guest on 18 May 2021 Gorrell, 1987). Finally, delay models claim that at a point ponent in a time range of about 250 to 600 msec after of ambiguity the parser tries to postpone any commit- word onset, turned out to be also elicited by semanti- ment (look-ahead, see Marcus, 1980) or that it only builds cally correct but unusual words (Kutas & Hillyard, 1984). an underspeciªed structure (Weinberg, 1993). But gar- Therefore, N400 was assumed to correspond to the den-path effects dictate that look-ahead must be limited degree of semantic priming of a word within the prevail- and that even partial commitments must be speciªc ing context (Van Petten & Kutas, 1991). enough to rule out those structures that cause process- The processing of ungrammatical sentences has also ing difªculties when the sentence gets disambiguated. been investigated in a number of studies. For example, Given the general approach just outlined, garden-path subcategorization (3a, below) and agreement violations effects will arise if the preferred structural assignment (3b), ungrammatical wh-questions (3c), and violations of turns out to be incorrect at the point of disambiguation conditions on phrase structure (3d) are associated with and revisions subsequently become necessary. Reanalysis a characteristic late positive-going component that has a of an initial structural assignment is responsible for the broad topographical distribution and starts about 500 perceived processing difªculty. msec after the word (italicized in 3) that indicates the One important aspect in parsing research is to specify mismatch (Neville, Nicol, Barss, Forster, & Garrett, 1991; the criterion according to which the parser selects the Osterhout & Holcomb, 1992; Osterhout, Holcomb, & preferred structure. Again, although the models differ Swinney, 1994; Osterhout & Mobley, 1995). with respect to the details of implementation, they al- (3) a. *The woman persuaded to answer the door. most uniformly assume that the parser will assign the b. *The elected ofªcials hopes to succeed. minimal structure that is compatible with the input c. *What was [ a [ picture of t ]] [ printed requirements, a property that possibly derives from the i NP N, i VP by the newspaper]? interaction of time constraints and capacity limitations. d. *The man admired Don’s of sketch the land- This point is important because it presupposes that scape. preferences hinge upon the existence of structural dif- ferences among alternative continuations. Research into This positivity is known as the P600, or syntactic positive the process of reanalysis constitutes another corner- shift (SPS) (Hagoort, Brown, & Groothusen, 1993; Oster- stone of parsing theory, which has been the focus of hout & Holcomb, 1992). In phrase structure violations, many recent studies. Revisions at the level of syntactic the late positivity is preceded by an enhanced left representation have usually been considered central to anterior negativity (N125, Neville et al., 1991; N180, the explanation of garden-path effects, but one question Friederici, Pfeifer, & Hahne, 1993) and a strongly left-lat- is whether revisions at other levels of representation eralized negativity around 400 msec (Neville et al., (e.g., the lexicon) may give rise to processing difªculties 1991). In sum, the perception of syntactic anomalies is as well. To successfully approach this question we need not associated with a component as distinct as the N400. a technique that is able to distinguish processing effects Instead, the brain’s response apparently varies depend- at different representational levels. ing on the actual type of syntactic violation that is involved. Most importantly, however, is the fact that the ERP variations to syntactic anomalies differ from those Garden Path Sentences and Event-Related that are obtained in the area of lexico-semantic process- Potentials ing. Therefore, ERPs seem to be sensitive to different One such promising technique is the study of event- levels of processing. related brain potentials (ERPs). ERPs provide a very close Although sentences that contain a semantic anomaly link to the brain functionality involved in language com- or are downright ungrammatical have already received a prehension.
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