Journal
BRAIN RESEARCH
Volume 1597, Issue -, Pages 139-158Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.brainres.2014.12.013
Keywords
Syntactic processing; Semantic processing; Phrase structure; Referential ambiguity; Discourse context; Language comprehension; Event-related brain potentials
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Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [31371021, 31070898]
- Natural Science Foundation of Beijing [7112069]
- Academy of Korean Studies [AKS-2011-R36]
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Two event-related brain potential experiments were conducted to investigate the functional interplay between discourse-level referential processing and local syntactic/semantic processing of phrases. We manipulated both the syntactic/semantic,coherence of a noun phrase (NP) and the referential ambiguity of the same NP. Incoherence of the NP elicited a P600 effect in both experiments. Referential ambiguities elicited a sustained negativity (Nref) in a subset of the participants in both experiments. Crucially, among participants showing robust Nref effects to referential ambiguity in the coherent condition, Nref effects were absent when the NP was incoherent. These results provide evidence against theories in which referential processing is functionally independent of local syntactic./semantic processing of phrases. Instead, a local phrase anomaly can block aspects of referential processing concerning ambiguity. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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