An ERP Study on the Processing of Subject-Verb and Object-Verb Gender Agreement in Punjabi

• Published in: Journal of psycholinguistic research Vol. 53; no. 4; p. 59
• Main Authors: Gulati, Mahima, Muralikrishnan, R., Choudhary, Kamal Kumar
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.08.2024; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Adult; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Brain; Brain - physiology; Brain research; Cognitive Psychology; Departments; Electroencephalography; Event-related potentials; Evoked Potentials - physiology; Female; Gender; Grammatical agreement; Grammatical gender; Grammatical subject; Humans; Indo-Aryan languages; Language; Language Processing; Male; Motor Vehicles; Nouns; Parsing; Periodicals; Psycholinguistics; Psychology; Punjabi language; Reading; Semitic Languages; Sentences; Syntax; Verbs; Word order; Young Adult; Subject-agreement; Language comprehension; Object-agreement; Event-related brain potential; P600; Gender; Punjabi
• ISSN: 0090-6905; 1573-6555; 1573-6555
• DOI: 10.1007/s10936-024-10095-4

This study was conducted with the aim of exploring the general parsing mechanisms involved in processing different kinds of dependency relations, namely verb agreement with subjects versus objects in Punjabi, an SOV Indo-Aryan language. Event related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded as twenty-five native Punjabi speakers read transitive sentences. Critical stimuli were either fully acceptable as regards verb agreement, or alternatively violated gender agreement with the subject or object. A linear mixed-models analysis confirmed a P600 effect at the position of the verb for all violations, regardless of whether subject or object agreement was violated. These results thus suggest that an identical mechanism is involved in gender agreement computation in Punjabi regardless of whether the agreement is with the subject or the object argument.