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An ERP study of coreference in S panish: Semantic and grammatical gender cues
Author(s) -
SilvaPereyra Juan,
GutierrezSigut Eva,
Carreiras Manuel
Publication year - 2012
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.1469-8986.2012.01446.x
Subject(s) - animacy , coreference , pronoun , psychology , ambiguity , semantics (computer science) , linguistics , event related potential , cognitive psychology , resolution (logic) , cognition , computer science , artificial intelligence , neuroscience , philosophy , programming language
We report two event‐related potentials ( ERPs ) experiments aimed to investigate the roles played by semantic and syntactic information during pronoun resolution. The first experiment was designed to show that ambiguity of the pronoun (e.g., word class ambiguity) makes an important contribution to the pattern observed in previous ERP studies. As expected, the results showed a different ERP pattern for ambiguous and nonambiguous pronouns. The second experiment analyzed pronoun resolution when gender agreement and animacy were manipulated, using only unambiguous pronouns. Results showed P 600 effects at 500 to 700 ms and at 700 to 900 ms. Amplitude of the second window was significantly greater for animate than for inanimate antecedents. The modulation of the agreement effect by animacy suggests that repair processes after grammatical disagreement detection are influenced by semantics.