English
 
Help Privacy Policy Disclaimer
  Advanced SearchBrowse

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Released

Journal Article

Eliciting thematic reanalysis effects: The role of syntax-independent information during parsing

MPS-Authors
/persons/resource/persons19563

Bornkessel,  Ina
MPI of Cognitive Neuroscience (Leipzig, -2003), The Prior Institutes, MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Max Planck Society;

/persons/resource/persons19643

Friederici,  Angela D.
MPI of Cognitive Neuroscience (Leipzig, -2003), The Prior Institutes, MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Max Planck Society;

External Resource
No external resources are shared
Fulltext (restricted access)
There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.
Fulltext (public)

bornkessel_eliciting.pdf
(Any fulltext), 189KB

Supplementary Material (public)
There is no public supplementary material available
Citation

Bornkessel, I., Schlesewsky, M., & Friederici, A. D. (2003). Eliciting thematic reanalysis effects: The role of syntax-independent information during parsing. Language and Cognitive Processes, 18(3), 269-298. doi:10.1080/01690960244000018.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0010-B089-D
Abstract
In this paper, we present experimental evidence for the existence of syntax-independent (viz. thematic) reanalysis effects. In an experiment using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), we manipulated the thematic structure of the verb in transitive, unambiguously case marked German verb-final clauses such that the processing of this verb either confirmed the ‘canonical’ hierarchical thematic ordering between the sentential arguments (active verbs) or required a reversal of this ordering (object-experiencer verbs). The latter elicited a parietal positivity between 300 and 600 ms post onset, which, as we argue, must be interpreted as reflecting a thematic reanalysis. The second experimental manipulation, i.e., a variation of word order (SO vs. OS), revealed an early positivity at the position of the secondNP in dative-nominative (OS) structures. Again, we account for this effect in terms of a thematic reanalysis, which becomes necessary when the original interpretation of the initial argument as thematically highest-ranking must be revised. We conclude from our data that case marking languages such as German may employ non-syntactic processing routes to determine the thematic interpretation of a sentence.