Abstract
n two ERP-experiments we examined whether discourse context could overrule a
local semantic violation. In both experiments, subjects listened to stories in which
a person was engaged in conversation with an inanimate object. In experiment
1, story-initial animacy violations reflected in an N400 effect were completely
neutralized further down the story. In experiment 2, canonical but story-irrelevant
inanimate predicates assigned to the inanimate object elicited an N400 effect,
compared to contextually appropriate animate predicates.
