When syntax meets semantics

Gunter, Thomas C.; Stowe, L. A.; Mulder, G.

doi:10.1111/j.1469-8986.1997.tb02142.x

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When syntax meets semantics

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Gunter, Thomas C.
MPI of Cognitive Neuroscience (Leipzig, -2003), The Prior Institutes, MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Max Planck Society;

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http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8986.1997.tb02142.x/pdf
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Citation

Gunter, T. C., Stowe, L. A., & Mulder, G. (1997). When syntax meets semantics. Psychophysiology, 34(6), 660-676. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8986.1997.tb02142.x.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0010-EB03-9

Abstract

Three experiments concerning the processing of syntactic and semantic violations were conducted. Event related potentials (ERPs) showed that semantic violations elicited an N400 response, whereas syntactic violations elicited two early negativities (150 and 350 ms) and a P600 response. No interaction between the semantic and early syntactic ERP effects was found sentence complexity and violation probability (25% vs 75%) affected only the P600 and not the early negativities. The probability effect was taken as evidence that the P600 resembles the P3B, The temporal order of word processing in a sentence as suggested by the data was such that a more automatic syntactic analysis was performed (earlier syntactic-related negativities) in parallel with a semantic analysis 9N400), after which a syntactic reanalysis was performed (P600). A reanalysis interpretation of the P600 could explain why the extent of the reanalysis differed with syntactic complexity and probability of ungrammaticality.