IS prosody a good predictor of up-coming information? ERPs evidence from spoken German sentences

Isel, F., Alter, K., and Friederici, A. D.
Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Leipzig, Germany
E-mail: isel@cns.mpg.de

The question of whether prosody is exploited by the parser for predicting up-coming information has been addressed in the present study. We approached this issue by investigating the auditory processing of complex German verbs that do take a particle (e. g., an-laecheln [to smile-at]). Precisely, our goal was to determine whether the prosodic information of the inflected verb stem helps the parser to predict the occurrence of a split particle at a later position in the sentence. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded while twenty German listeners were processing morpho-lexically and/or prosodically correct or incorrect German sentences. The critical item was either the split particle or the preposition. Participants performed an off-line probe detection task (PDT). ERP data indicate that prosodic information of the verb stems is consulted on-line by the parser in order to predict the occurrence of a split particle. An N400-effect was found for the processing of split particles following verb stems which do not take a particle, but only if the prosodic contour of the verb stem specifically marks the presence of a split particle. We argue that the N400 component reflects the higher costs associated with the (unsuccessful) reaccess to the lexicon. Furthermore, as a general reflection of prosodic processes, a closure positive shift (CPS) was found at intonational phrase boundaries. Taken together, the present findings provide strong evidence for the notion that prosody is a good predictor of up-coming information during the auditory processing of German sentences. ences.