Premium
When syntax meets semantics
Author(s) -
GUNTER THOMAS C.,
STOWE LAURIE A.,
MULDER GUSBERTUS
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8986.1997.tb02142.x
Subject(s) - p600 , n400 , syntax , sentence , semantics (computer science) , sentence processing , natural language processing , psychology , computer science , linguistics , comprehension , artificial intelligence , event related potential , cognition , programming language , philosophy , neuroscience
Three experiments concerning the processing of syntactic and semantic violations were conducted. Event related potentials (ERPs) showed that semantic violations elicited an N400 response, whereas syntactic violations elicited two early negativities (150 and 350 ms) and a P600 response. No interaction between the semantic and early syntactic ERP effects was found sentence complexity and violation probability (25% vs 75%) affected only the P600 and not the early negativities. The probability effect was taken as evidence that the P600 resembles the P3B, The temporal order of word processing in a sentence as suggested by the data was such that a more automatic syntactic analysis was performed (earlier syntactic‐related negativities) in parallel with a semantic analysis 9N400), after which a syntactic reanalysis was performed (P600). A reanalysis interpretation of the P600 could explain why the extent of the reanalysis differed with syntactic complexity and probability of ungrammaticality.