When a causal assumption is not satisfied by reality: differential brain responses to concessive and causal relations during sentence comprehension

Abstract

A concessive construction like Grandma moved from Southern to Northern China although she likes the South, where the winter is warm implies a causal assumption that is based on one's real world knowledge but is inconsistent with the asserted fact. This study investigated to what extent the processing of a concessive construction differs from the processing of a causal construction with an explicit marker because, in which a causal assumption is stated and approved by the fact. The critical word in the subordinate clause was congruent or incongruent with the discourse context. The incongruent word elicited a larger N400 followed by a larger P600 for the causal construction but a larger N400 followed by a larger late negativity for the concessive construction, suggesting that the re-establishment of the conjunctive relations and the underlying brain responses are differentially affected by the conjunction type and by the viability of pragmatic meaning enrichment.