Neural Correlates of Processing Syntax in Music and ... - PubMan

Language Perception 67
An N400 may be elicited when a word rendered a sentence semantically incongruent
(Holcomb & Neville, 1991; Kutas & Hillyard, 1980), when the verb argument structure
is violated (Friederici & Meyer, 2004), when an unexpected but correct word category
appeared (Hinojosa, Moreno, Casado, Munoz, & Pozo, 2005), or when thematic roles
can not be assigned (Frisch & Schlesewsky, 2001).
An important issue is how lexical-semantic and syntactic processes interact. Hahne and
Friederici (2002) found that the double violation also elicited a biphasic ELAN-P600
pattern, but no N400. This provides strong support for the independence of the early
syntactic processes from semantic information. It further demonstrates that early syntactic
processes can influence the following semantic processes (suppressing the N400).
Friederici, Gunter, Hahne, and Mauth (2004) set out to investigate whether this result
was due to the temporal ordering (syntactic information is available prior to semantic
information) or whether it is functionally based (syntactic information is used prior to
semantic information). The syntactic violation was, thus, either realized in the prefix or
in the suffix. The double violation elicited a left anterior negativity (resembling an
ELAN, since the word category decision point was later), no N400, and a P600 which
was larger for the double violation than for the single syntax violation condition. The
results of both studies provided clear evidence for the functional independence of structure-building
processes from semantic information: the ELAN is elicited even when the
word category information (suffix) becomes available after the semantic information
(word stem).
Friederici, von Cramon, and Kotz (2007) demonstrated an interaction of prosodic with
syntactic information (a violation of the verb argument structure) in an ERP experiment
in patients with lesions in the posterior corpus callosum (CC) and normal controls. They
underlined the crucial involvement of the posterior third of the CC in the interhemispheric
interplay of suprasegmental prosodic information and syntactic information: In
the controls an N400-like effect was found for prosodically mismatching verb argument
structures (indicating a stable interplay between prosody and syntax). In contrast, patients
with lesions in the posterior third of the CC did not show this effect whereas a
prosody-independent semantic N400 effect could be elicited.
A LAN (between 300 and 500 ms) was often found in studies investigating processes of
thematic role assignment based on morphosyntactic information that signals agreement
between different phrases or between elements within a phrase. These studies often used
violations of either agreement information (e.g., subject-verb agreement, Hagoort &
Brown, 2000) or verb-argument structure information (e.g., Rösler, Friederici, Pütz, &
Hahne, 1993). Again, the question arises in how far these processes interact with early
syntactic processes. Rossi, Gugler, Hahne, and Friederici (2005) did not observe an