Abstract
Research on language comprehension using event-related potentials (ERPs) reported distinct ERP components reliably related to the processing of semantic (N400) and syntactic information (P600). Recent ERP studies have challenged this well-defined distinction by showing P600 effects for semantic and pragmatic anomalies. So far, it is still unresolved whether the P600 reflects specific or rather common processes. The present study addresses this question by investigating ERPs in response to a syntactic and pragmatic (irony) manipulation, as well as a combined syntactic and pragmatic manipulation. For the syntactic condition, a morphosyntactic violation was applied, whereas for the pragmatic condition, such as “That is rich”, either an ironic or literal interpretation was achieved, depending on the prior context. The ERPs at the critical word showed a LAN-P600 pattern for syntactically incorrect sentences relative to correct ones. For ironic compared to literal sentences, ERPs showed a P200 effect followed by a P600 component. In comparison of the syntax-related P600 to the irony-related P600, distributional differences were found. Moreover, for the P600 time window (i.e., 500–900 ms), different changes in theta power between the syntax and pragmatics effects were found, suggesting that different patterns of neural activity contributed to each respective effect. Thus, both late positivities seem to be differently sensitive to these two types of linguistic information, and might reflect distinct neurocognitive processes, such as reanalysis of the sentence structure versus pragmatic reanalysis.
Highlights
Event-related potentials (ERPs) are well suited to depict the timing of language comprehension, as well as to dissociate the neurocognitive processes engaged in the comprehension of linguistic and non-linguistic information
The current study investigated late positivities evoked by syntactic anomaly and pragmatic ambiguity in order to scrutinize the electrophysiological and functional characteristics of the P600 related to language comprehension
The present study examined processing mechanisms reflected in the P600 component seen in response to the processing of syntactic and pragmatic information
Summary
Event-related potentials (ERPs) are well suited to depict the timing of language comprehension, as well as to dissociate the neurocognitive processes engaged in the comprehension of linguistic and non-linguistic information. Research on language comprehension has shown distinct ERP components related to the processing of semantic/pragmatic (N400) and syntactic information (P600). Because an N400 response, that is, a centroparietal negativity between 300–500 ms after stimulus onset, reliably emerged for different types of semantic manipulations, this component seems to be sensitive to lexical processing and might reflect access to meaning (for review see [1,2]). For manipulations of syntactic information, a P600 component is most robustly obtained (for review see e.g., [6]) This positivity emerges around 500 ms after stimulus presentation and displays a centroparietal scalp distribution. The P600 is considered as a common indicator of syntactic operations [6,15] Since these early reports of syntax-related positivities, the language-specificity of the P600 has been controversially debated. The amplitude of P600 was modulated by semantic expectancy [22], thematic role and semantic reversal anomalies [23,24,25,26,27], as well as by semantic incongruencies on the sentence and discourse levels [28,29,30,31,32]
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