Abstract
Previous event-related potential (ERP) studies comparing affirmative and negative sentences revealed an N400 for semantically mismatching final words, resulting in a larger N400 for false relative to true affirmative sentences and an opposite effect for negative sentences. Hence, the N400 was independent of the presence of a negation. However, the true negative as well as the false affirmative condition often contained entities or features from different semantic categories and thereby with weak feature overlap, such as e.g., A cat is (not) a saw or Fears are (not) round, which were then compared to true affirmative and false negative sentences containing entities with stronger feature overlap and partially even hyponomy relations, e.g., A cat is (not) an animal or Planets are (not) round. Employing world-knowledge variations, in the current study, we investigate whether increasing the feature overlap between the entities of all conditions leads to similar ERP-patterns as in the previous studies. For this purpose, we use sentences of the following type: George Clooney is (not) an actor vs. George Clooney is (not) a singer where both target words describe a similar profession and thereby function as alternatives to each other. However, in line with the previous studies, we find a truth by polarity interaction, namely, the N400 ERPs are significantly larger for false compared to true affirmative sentences, whereas the effect for negative sentences shows a reversed, though not significant, trend. Overall, the ERP-data suggest that the integration of a negation with the information in its scope is neither fully incremental nor fully delayed, which might be linked to the use of cohyponyms and to the increased feature overlap between alternatives (e.g., actor, singer). Additionally, questionnaire-based rating data show that affirmative sentences are perceived as more natural than negative sentences, and, moreover, that true sentences are perceived as more natural than false sentences, independent of their polarity.
Highlights
Negation is a feature of every human language and an essential element of everyday communication
The comprehension of isolated negated sentences has been argued to be an exception to incremental language comprehension, which is based on evidence from a range of event-related potential studies showing an interaction of polarity and truth-value
Our study examined the comprehension of negated sentences in comparison to affirmative sentences, employing world knowledge in true and false sentences
Summary
Negation is a feature of every human language and an essential element of everyday communication. Despite its frequent use in natural language, the presence of a negative marker seems to elicit additional processing. At least when presented in isolation, negative sentences have been argued to constitute an exception to fully incremental language comprehension (Carpenter and Just, 1975; Fischler et al, 1983; Kaup et al, 2006). Employing world-knowledge variations, in the current study, we investigate how the use of cohyponyms of a joint hyperonym and thereby a higher overlap of semantic features between the negated entity and its correct alternatives modifies the processing as typically indicated by the N400 ERP, potentially leading to an incremental comprehension process. Using contextfree sentences allows a direct comparison to earlier studies employing similar designs
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