Morphosyntactic prediction in automatic neural processing of spoken language: EEG evidence

TY - JOUR

T1 - Morphosyntactic prediction in automatic neural processing of spoken language

T2 - EEG evidence

AU - Alekseeva, Maria

AU - Myachykov, Andriy

AU - Bermudez-Margaretto, Beatriz

AU - Shtyrov, Yury

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2024 Elsevier B.V.

PY - 2024/8/1

Y1 - 2024/8/1

N2 - Automatic parsing of syntactic information by the human brain is a well-established phenomenon, but its mechanisms remain poorly understood. Its best-known neurophysiological reflection is early left-anterior negativity (ELAN) component of event-related potentials (ERPs), with two alternative hypotheses for its origin: (1) error detection, or (2) morphosyntactic prediction/priming. To test these alternatives, we conducted two experiments using a non-attend passive design with visual distraction and recorded ERPs to spoken pronoun-verb phrases with/without agreement violations and the same critical verbs presented in isolation without preceding pronouns. The results revealed an ELAN at ∼130-220 ms for pronoun-verb gender agreement violations, confirming a high degree of automaticity in early morphosyntactic parsing. Critically, the strongest ELAN was elicited by verbs outside phrasal context, which suggests that the typical ELAN pattern is underpinned by a reduction of ERP amplitudes for felicitous combinations, reflecting syntactic priming/predictability between related words/morphemes (potentially mediated by associative links formed during previous linguistic experience) rather than specialised error-detection processes.

AB - Automatic parsing of syntactic information by the human brain is a well-established phenomenon, but its mechanisms remain poorly understood. Its best-known neurophysiological reflection is early left-anterior negativity (ELAN) component of event-related potentials (ERPs), with two alternative hypotheses for its origin: (1) error detection, or (2) morphosyntactic prediction/priming. To test these alternatives, we conducted two experiments using a non-attend passive design with visual distraction and recorded ERPs to spoken pronoun-verb phrases with/without agreement violations and the same critical verbs presented in isolation without preceding pronouns. The results revealed an ELAN at ∼130-220 ms for pronoun-verb gender agreement violations, confirming a high degree of automaticity in early morphosyntactic parsing. Critically, the strongest ELAN was elicited by verbs outside phrasal context, which suggests that the typical ELAN pattern is underpinned by a reduction of ERP amplitudes for felicitous combinations, reflecting syntactic priming/predictability between related words/morphemes (potentially mediated by associative links formed during previous linguistic experience) rather than specialised error-detection processes.

KW - EEG

KW - ELAN

KW - ERP

KW - Morphosyntactic processing

KW - Predictability

KW - Speech perception

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85192744810&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.brainres.2024.148949

DO - 10.1016/j.brainres.2024.148949

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 38641266

AN - SCOPUS:85192744810

SN - 0006-8993

VL - 1836

JO - Brain Research

JF - Brain Research

M1 - 148949

ER -