(De-)Accentuation and the Processing of Information Status: Evidence from Event-Related Brain Potentials

Autor/inn/en	Baumann, Stefan; Schumacher, Petra B.
Titel	(De-)Accentuation and the Processing of Information Status: Evidence from Event-Related Brain Potentials
Quelle	In: Language and Speech, 55 (2012) 3, S.361-381 (21 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0023-8309
DOI	10.1177/0023830911422184
Schlagwörter	Sentences; Speech Communication; Nouns; Brain Hemisphere Functions; Language Processing; Diagnostic Tests; German; Intonation; Suprasegmentals; Physiology; Language Research; Form Classes (Languages); Neurolinguistics + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Sentence analysis; Satzanalyse; Sprachverarbeitung; Diagnostic test; Diagnostischer Test; Deutscher; Physiologie; Sprachforschung; Analytischer Sprachbau; Neurolinguistisches Programmieren
Abstract	The paper reports on a perception experiment in German that investigated the neuro-cognitive processing of information structural concepts and their prosodic marking using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Experimental conditions controlled the information status (given vs. new) of referring and non-referring target expressions (nouns vs. adjectives) and were elicited via context sentences, which did not--unlike most previous ERP studies in the field--trigger an explicit focus expectation. Target utterances displayed prosodic realizations of the critical words which differed in accent position and accent type. Electrophysiological results showed an effect of information status, maximally distributed over posterior sites, displaying a biphasic N400-Late Positivity pattern for new information. We claim that this pattern reflects increased processing demands associated with new information, with the N400 indicating enhanced costs from linking information with the previous discourse and the Late Positivity indicating the listener's effort to update his/her discourse model. The prosodic manipulation registered more pronounced effects over anterior regions and revealed an enhanced negativity followed by a Late Positivity for deaccentuation, probably also reflecting costs from discourse linking and updating respectively. The data further lend indirect support for the idea that givenness applies not only to referents but also to non-referential expressions ("lexical givenness"). (Contains 4 tables, 5 figures and 8 notes.) (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10