Proceedings Fonetik 2009 - Institutionen för lingvistik

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Proceedings, FONETIK 2009, Dept. of Linguistics, Stockholm UniversityGrammaticalization of prosody in the brainMikael Roll and Merle HorneDepartment of Linguistics and Phonetics, Lund University, LundAbstractBased on the results from three Event-RelatedPotential (ERP) studies, we show how the degreeof grammaticalization of prosodic featuresinfluences their impact on syntactic and morphologicalprocessing. Thus, results indicatethat only lexicalized word accents influencemorphological processing. Furthermore, it isshown how an assumed semi-grammaticalizedleft-edge boundary tone activates main clausestructure without, however, inhibiting subordinateclause structure in the presence of competingsyntactic cues.IntroductionIn the rapid online processing of speech, prosodiccues can in many cases be decisive forthe syntactic interpretation of utterances. Accordingto constraint-based processing models,the brain activates different possible syntacticstructures in parallel, and relevant syntactic,semantic, and prosodic features work as constraintsthat increase or decrease the activationof particular structures (Gennari and Mac-Donald, 2008). How important a prosodic cueis for the activation of a particular syntacticstructure depends to a large extent on the frequencyof their co-occurrence. Another factorwe assume to play an important role is how‘grammaticalized’ the association is betweenthe prosodic feature and the syntactic structure,i.e. to what degree it has been incorporated intothe language norm.Sounds that arise as side effects of the articulatoryconstraints on speech production maygradually become part of the language norm(Ohala, 1993). In the same vein, speakers seemto universally exploit the tacit knowledge of thebiological conditions on speech production inorder to express different pragmatic meanings(Gussenhoven, 2002). For instance, due to conditionson the exhalation phase of the breathingprocess, the beginning of utterances is normallyassociated with more energy and higher fundamentalfrequency than the end. Mimicking thistendency, the ‘Production Code’ might showthe boundaries of utterances by associating thebeginning with high pitch and the end with lowpitch, although it might not be physically necessary.According to Gussenhoven, the ProductionCode has been grammaticalized in manylanguages in the use of a right edge H% toshow non-finality in an utterance, as well as aleft-edge %H, to indicate topic-refreshment.In the present study, we will first examinethe processing of a Swedish left-edge H tonethat would appear to be on its way to becomingincorporated into the grammar. The H will beshown to activate main clause structure in theonline processing of speech, but without inhibitingsubordinate clause structure when cooccurringwith the subordinating conjunctionatt ‘that’ and subordinate clause word order.The processing dissociation will be related tothe low impact the tone has on normativejudgments in competition with the conjunctionatt and subordinate clause word order constraints.This shows that the tone has a relativelylow degree of grammaticalization,probably related to the fact that it is confined tothe spoken modality, lacking any counterpart inwritten language (such as commas, which correlatewith right-edge boundaries). We will furtherillustrate the influence of lexicalized andnon-lexicalized tones associated with Swedishword accents on morphological processing.The effects of prosody on syntactic andmorphological processing were monitored onlinein three experiments using electroencephalography(EEG) and the Event-Related Potentials(ERP) method. EEG measures changes inthe electric potential at a number of electrodes(here 64) over the scalp. The potential changesare due to electrochemical processes involvedin the transmission of information between neurons.The ERP method time locks this brain activityto the presentation of stimuli, e.g. wordsor morphemes. In order to obtain regular patternscorresponding to the processing of specificstimuli rather than to random brain activity,ERPs from at least forty trials per conditionare averaged and statistically analyzed fortwenty or more participants. In the averagedERP-waveform, recurrent responses to stimuliin the form of positive (plotted downwards) ornegative potential peaks, referred to as ‘components’,emerge.In this contribution, we will review resultsrelated to the ‘P600’ component, a positive66
Proceedings, FONETIK 2009, Dept. of Linguistics, Stockholm UniversityFigure 1. Waveform and F0 contour of an embedded main clause sentence with (H, solid line) or without(∅, dotted line) a left-edge boundary tone.peak around 600 ms following stimuli that triggerreprocessing due to garden path effects orsyntactic errors (Osterhout and Holcomb,1992). The P600 often gives rise to a longersustained positivity from around 500 to 1000ms or more.A semi-grammaticalized toneIn Central Swedish, a H tone is phoneticallyassociated with the last syllable of the first prosodicword of utterances (Horne, 1994; Horneet al., 2001). Roll (2006) found that the H appearsin embedded main clauses but not in subordinateclauses. It thus seems that this ‘leftedgeboundary tone’ functions as a signal that amain clause is about to begin.Swedish subordinate clauses are distinguishedfrom main clauses by their word order.Whereas main clauses have the word order S–V–SAdv (Subject–Verb–Sentence Adverb), asin Afghanerna intog inte Persien ‘(literally)The Afghans conquered not Persia’, where thesentence adverb inte ‘not’ follows the verb intog‘conquered’, in subordinate clauses, thesentence adverb instead precedes the verb (S–SAdv–V), as in …att afghanerna inte intogPersien ‘(lit.) …that the Afghans not conqueredPersia’. In spoken Swedish, main clauses withpostverbal sentence adverbs are often embeddedinstead of subordinate clauses in order toexpress embedded assertions, although manyspeakers consider it normatively unacceptable.For instance, the sentence Jag sa att [afghanernaintog inte Persien] ‘(lit.) I said that theAfghans conquered not Persia’ would be interpretedas an assertion that what is expressed bythe embedded main clause within brackets istrue.Roll et al. (2009a) took advantage of theword order difference between main and subordinateclauses in order to study the effects ofthe left-edge boundary tone on the processingof clause structure. Participants listened to sentencessimilar to the one in Figure 1, but withthe sentence adverb ju ‘of course’ instead ofinte ‘not’, and judged whether the word orderwas correct. The difference between the testconditions was the presence or absence of a Hleft-edge boundary tone in the first prosodicword of the embedded clause, as seen in the lastsyllable of the subject afghanerna ‘the Afghans’in Figure 1. Roll et al. hypothesized thata H left-edge boundary tone would increase theactivation of main clause structure, and thusmake the S–V–SAdv word order relativelymore expected than in the corresponding clausewithout a H associated with the first word.When there was no H tone in the embeddedclause, the sentence adverb yielded a biphasicpositivity in the ERPs, interpreted as a P345-P600 sequence (Figure 2). In easily resolvedgarden path sentences, the P600 has been regularlyobserved to be preceded by a positivepeak between 300 and 400 ms (P345). Thebiphasic sequence has been interpreted as thediscovery and reprocessing of unexpectedstructures that are relatively easy to reprocess(Friederici et al. 2001).67
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