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Dispreferred adjective orders elicit brain responses associated with lexico-semantic rather than syntactic
Hsu-Wen Huang1, Kara D Federmeier
1Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Champaign, IL 61820, USA. hwhuang@illinois.edu
Brain Research
|August 14, 2012
Summary
Dispreferred adjective orders in language comprehension affect semantic predictability, not syntax. Controlling for concreteness revealed larger N400s for non-preferred adjective sequences, impacting mental image generation.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Linguistics
Background:
- Adjective order in English follows conventional patterns.
- Previous research suggested syntactic processing difficulties (P600 effect) for dispreferred orders.
- The role of adjective concreteness in these effects was unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the impact of adjective order preference and concreteness on language comprehension.
- To differentiate between syntactic and semantic/lexical processing of dispreferred adjective orders.
- To clarify the ERP (Event-Related Potential) correlates of adjective ordering.
Main Methods:
- Examined ERP responses to phrases with varied adjective order and concreteness.
- Compared typical and atypical adjective orders (e.g., "exhaustive hardback encyclopedia" vs. "heavy informative encyclopedia").
- Analyzed ERP components like N400 and P600 to specific words in the phrases.
Main Results:
- Concreteness effects initially mimicked syntactic P600-like effects in previous studies.
- When concreteness was controlled, dispreferred orders elicited larger N400s on the second adjective and noun.
- No evidence for syntactic processing difficulties (P600) was found for dispreferred orders.
Conclusions:
- Dispreferred adjective orders primarily affect lexico-semantic processing and mental imagery.
- Findings suggest that difficulties with non-preferred adjective sequences relate to semantic predictability, not syntactic rule violations.
- The N400 component is sensitive to the predictability of adjective sequences in comprehension.
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