Abstract
ABSTRACTAs an important pragmatic concept in linguistics, information structure differentiates focused/new information from background/given information. The present study investigated how the correspondence between focus (new information) and accentuation influences language processing at different positions (clause-medial vs. clause-final) of sentences in a semantic comprehension task. We found that focus elicited a larger negativity (at the clause-medial position) and a following positivity (at both the cause-medial and clause-final positions) compared to non-focus, indicating that listeners spend more cognitive resource to integrate new, focused information into discourse. Additionally, missing accent on focus elicited a negative effect, while superfluous accent on background evoked a positive effect at the late position. Furthermore, additional focus and accentuation effects were observed only at the clause-final position. The different ERP effects in the two positions suggest that listeners make online use of all available cues to process focus and accentuation in a predictive way.
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