Processing of complex morphosyntactic structures in French: ERP evidence from native speakers.

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Neuroscience
• Computational Linguistics

Background:

• Auditory processing of complex grammar, like the French subjunctive, presents challenges for the brain.
• Understanding the neurocognitive basis of grammatical complexity is crucial for language acquisition and processing models.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the neurocognitive mechanisms of auditory processing for verbal complexity in French, specifically the present subjunctive mode.
• To examine how different grammatical triggers (verbs vs. conjunctions) and their positions influence brain responses during sentence comprehension.

Main Methods:

• Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 32 native French speakers processing 200 ecological sentences.
• A violation paradigm was used, presenting sentences with correct or incorrect present subjunctive verb agreement.
• Participants performed an offline acceptability judgment task.

Main Results:

• A delayed anterior negativity (AN) and a P600 component were observed, larger for incongruent than congruent verbal agreement.
• These effects showed differential lateralization (left vs. right) depending on the subjunctive trigger (conjunctions vs. verbs).
• The AN/P600 pattern was more pronounced when grammatical elements appeared in later positions within sentences.

Conclusions:

• The French subjunctive's morphosyntactic complexity engages at least two neurocognitive processes: initial morphosyntactic analysis (AN) and syntactic revision/repair (P600).
• These processes are modulated by the type of element triggering the subjunctive and its position in the sentence.
• Findings contribute to understanding the neural basis of grammatical processing and complexity in real-time language comprehension.