Linguistics Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Linguistics, including details on human language, phonetics, syntax, phonology.

Prosodic clues to syntactic processing--a PET and ERP study.

Strelnikov KN, Vorobyev VA, Chernigovskaya TV, Medvedev SV

Institute of the Human Brain RAS, Saint-Petersburg, Russia. kuzma.strelnikov@cbru.helsinki.fi

Syntactic processing of spoken speech often involves prosodic clues processing. In the present PET and ERP study, subjects listened to phrases in which different prosodic segmentation dramatically changed the meaning of the phrase. In the contrast of segmented vs. non-segmented phrases, PET data revealed activation in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and in the right cerebellum. These brain structures, therefore, might be part of the syntactic analysis network involved in prosodic segmentation and pitch processing. ERP results revealed frontal negativity that was sensitive to the position of the segmenting pause, possibly reflecting prosody-based semantic prediction. The present results are discussed in the context of their relation to brain networks of emotions, prosody, and syntax perception.

Published 6 February 2006 in Neuroimage, 29(4): 1127-34.
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