Eliciting ERP components for morphosyntactic agreement mismatches in perfectly grammatical sentences
Article [Version of Record]
Abstract(s)
The present event-related brain potential (ERP) study investigates mechanisms
underlying the processing of morphosyntactic information during real-time auditory
sentence comprehension in French. Employing an auditory-visual sentence-picture
matching paradigm, we investigated two types of anomalies using entirely grammatical
auditory stimuli: (i) semantic mismatches between visually presented actions and spoken
verbs, and (ii) number mismatches between visually presented agents and corresponding
morphosyntactic number markers in the spoken sentences (determiners, pronouns in
liaison contexts, and verb-final “inflection”). We varied the type and amount of number
cues available in each sentence using two manipulations. First, we manipulated the
verb type, by using verbs whose number cue was audible through subject (clitic)
pronoun liaison (liaison verbs) as well as verbs whose number cue was audible on the
verb ending (consonant-final verbs). Second, we manipulated the pre-verbal context:
each sentence was preceded either by a neutral context providing no number cue,
or by a subject noun phrase containing a subject number cue on the determiner.
Twenty-two French-speaking adults participated in the experiment. While sentence
judgment accuracy was high, participants’ ERP responses were modulated by the type of
mismatch encountered. Lexico-semantic mismatches on the verb elicited the expected
N400 and additional negativities. Determiner number mismatches elicited early anterior
negativities, N400s and P600s. Verb number mismatches elicited biphasic N400-P600
patterns. However, pronoun + verb liaison mismatches yielded this pattern only in the
plural, while consonant-final changes did so in the singular and the plural. Furthermore,
an additional sustained frontal negativity was observed in two of the four verb mismatch
conditions: plural liaison and singular consonant-final forms. This study highlights the
different contributions of number cues in oral language processing and is the first to
investigate whether auditory-visual mismatches can elicit errors reminiscent of outright
grammatical errors. Our results emphasize that neurocognitive mechanisms underlying
number agreement in French are modulated by the type of cue that is used to identify
auditory-visual mismatches.
Other location(s)
Collections
This document disseminated on Papyrus is the exclusive property of the copyright holders and is protected by the Copyright Act (R.S.C. 1985, c. C-42). It may be used for fair dealing and non-commercial purposes, for private study or research, criticism and review as provided by law. For any other use, written authorization from the copyright holders is required.