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Semantics prevalence over syntax during sentence processing: a brain potential study of noun-adjective agreement in Spanish.

Martín-Loeches M, Nigbur R, Casado P, Hohlfeld A, Sommer W

Center for Human Evolution and Behavior, UCM-ISCIII. Sinesio Delgado, 4, Pabellón 14, 28029 Madrid, Spain. mmartinloeches@isciii.es

A review of the literature about the interplay of syntax and semantics, using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), revealed that the results are highly heterogeneous, owing to several possible variables. An experiment was conducted with Spanish sentences that factorially combined syntactic and semantic violations in the same sentence-intermediate adjective and controlled for working memory demands, variables that in previous studies have rarely been taken into consideration. Violations consisted in noun-adjective number or gender disagreements (syntactic violation), noun-adjective semantic incompatibility (semantic violation), or both (combined violation). The N400 to semantic violations was unaffected by additional syntactic violations. The P600/SPS component, considered to reflect syntactic processes, was elicited by both single syntactic and semantic violations but seemed to be diminished in combined violations relative to single syntactic violations. These results suggest that under the conditions of the present experiment semantic information may have a prevailing role over syntactic information.

Published 3 July 2006 in Brain Res, 1093(1): 178-89.
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