Abstract
BackgroundThe online segmentation of spoken single sentences has repeatedly been associated with a particular event-related brain potential. The brain response could be attributed to the perception of major prosodic boundaries, and was termed Closure Positive Shift (CPS). However, verbal exchange between humans is mostly realized in the form of cooperative dialogs instead of loose strings of single sentences. The present study investigated whether listeners use prosodic cues for structuring larger contextually embedded utterances (i.e. dialogs) like in single sentence processing.MethodsERPs were recorded from listeners (n = 22) when presented with question-answer dialogs in German. The prosody of the answer (target sentence) either matched the context provided by a question or did not match the context question.ResultsCPS responses to the processing of the target sentences are elicited, first, when listeners encounter information comprising 'novelties', i.e. information not mentioned in the preceding question but facts corrected between context and target. Thereby it is irrelevant whether the actual prosody of the target sentence is in congruence with the informative status or not. Second, when listeners encounter target sentences which do not convey any novelties but only previously 'given' already known information, the structuring of the speech input is driven by prosody again. The CPS is then elicited when listeners perceive major prosodic boundaries similar as for the processing of context-free single sentences.ConclusionThe study establishes a link between the on-line structuring of context-free (single sentences) and context-embedded utterances (dialogs) as measured by ERPs. Moreover, the impact of prosodic phrasing and accentuation on the perception of spoken utterances on and beyond sentence level is discussed.
Highlights
The online segmentation of spoken single sentences has repeatedly been associated with a particular event-related brain potential
The results show that when listeners are presented with contextually embedded sentences the Closure Positive Shift (CPS) is not elicited by perceiving major prosodic boundaries as during context-free single sentence processing [12]
In condition FF, the interplay between context and target signals a focus which is realized with the appropriate accentuation
Summary
The online segmentation of spoken single sentences has repeatedly been associated with a particular event-related brain potential. Verbal exchange between humans is mostly realized in the form of cooperative dialogs instead of loose strings of single sentences. The present study investigated whether listeners use prosodic cues for structuring larger contextually embedded utterances (i.e. dialogs) like in single sentence processing. Humans use dialog conversation constantly to exchange information between them. Most people never recognize that the verbal exchanges between them are arranged in a highly structured way. The term 'information structure' is used to designate that connected utterances are composed of socalled 'information units' [2] which can be larger than a single syllable or word. The term 'focus' is used to refer to information centers which are currently novel for listeners or contrast with previous assertions of dialog partners (interlocutors). Information which listeners already encountered earlier in a discourse is referred to as non-focused or given information
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