The semantic processing of syntactic structure in sentence comprehension: An ERP study

@article{citeulike:1179872, abstract = {Previous studies have demonstrated that verbs violating selectional constraints of their arguments elicit N400 effects in the event-related potentials (ERPs) in sentence comprehension. The present study examined brain responses to verbs violating semantic constraints specified by syntactic structures (i.e., phrasal constructions), contrasting them with those elicited by lexical-semantic violations between verbs and their arguments. The construction-based semantic violations gave rise to a posterior N400, while the lexical-based semantic violations produced a much stronger N400 with a broader scalp distribution. These findings suggested that the integration of verb meaning with prior sentence context is influenced not only by semantic features of preceding content words with which the verb co-occurs, but also by semantic properties of the syntactic structure in which the verb appears. This study provides online evidence supporting the constructionist approaches to language, which claim that syntactic structures may have their own (abstract) meanings, independent of lexical meanings of their constituent content words.}, author = {Ye, Zheng and Zhan, Weidong and Zhou, Xiaolin }, citeulike-article-id = {1179872}, doi = {10.1016/j.brainres.2007.01.030}, journal = {Brain Research}, keywords = {brain, brainres, comprehension, constructionist, erp, language, n400, semantics, sentence, syntax}, month = {April}, pages = {135--145}, posted-at = {2007-03-21 18:35:24}, priority = {3}, title = {The semantic processing of syntactic structure in sentence comprehension: An ERP study}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2007.01.030}, volume = {1142}, year = {2007} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:1179872 L3 - citeulike-article-id:1179872 TI - The semantic processing of syntactic structure in sentence comprehension: An ERP study JF - Brain Research VL - 1142 SP - 135 EP - 145 N2 - Previous studies have demonstrated that verbs violating selectional constraints of their arguments elicit N400 effects in the event-related potentials (ERPs) in sentence comprehension. The present study examined brain responses to verbs violating semantic constraints specified by syntactic structures (i.e., phrasal constructions), contrasting them with those elicited by lexical-semantic violations between verbs and their arguments. The construction-based semantic violations gave rise to a posterior N400, while the lexical-based semantic violations produced a much stronger N400 with a broader scalp distribution. These findings suggested that the integration of verb meaning with prior sentence context is influenced not only by semantic features of preceding content words with which the verb co-occurs, but also by semantic properties of the syntactic structure in which the verb appears. This study provides online evidence supporting the constructionist approaches to language, which claim that syntactic structures may have their own (abstract) meanings, independent of lexical meanings of their constituent content words. KW - brain KW - brainres KW - comprehension KW - constructionist KW - erp KW - language KW - n400 KW - semantics KW - sentence KW - syntax AU - Ye, Zheng AU - Zhan, Weidong AU - Zhou, Xiaolin PY - 2007/04/20/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2007.01.030 ER -