Influences of semantic and syntactic context on open- and closed-class words

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded as subjects read semantically meaningful, syntactically legal but nonsensical and random word strings. The constraints imposed by formal sentence structure alone did not reduce the amplitude of the N400 component elicited by open-class words, whereas sem...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inMemory & cognition Vol. 19; no. 1; pp. 95 - 112
Main Authors Van Petten, Cyma, Kutas, Marta
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Austin, TX Psychonomic Society 01.01.1991
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Adolescent
Adult
Anatomical correlates of behavior
Arousal - physiology
Attention - physiology
Behavioral psychophysiology
Biological and medical sciences
Cerebral Cortex - physiology
Cognition & reasoning
Error Analysis
Evoked Potentials, Visual - physiology
Female
Function Word
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Language
Male
Memory
Psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reading
Semantics
Sentence
Social research
Syntax
Verbal Learning - physiology
Word
Context
Stimulus frequency
Congruence
Word
Response amplitude
Central nervous system
Electrophysiology
Visual evoked potential
Cognition
Electroencephalography
Reading
Language
Semantics
Syntax
Sentence
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ISSN0090-502X
1532-5946
DOI10.3758/BF03198500

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Summary:Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded as subjects read semantically meaningful, syntactically legal but nonsensical and random word strings. The constraints imposed by formal sentence structure alone did not reduce the amplitude of the N400 component elicited by open-class words, whereas semantic constraints did. Semantic constraints also eliminated the word-frequency effect of a larger N400 for low-frequency words. Responses to closed-class words exhibited reduced N400 amplitudes in syntactic and congruent sentences, indicating that formal sentence structure placed greater restrictions on closed-class words than it did on open-class words. However, unlike the open-class results, the impact of sentence context on closed-class words was stable across word positions, suggesting that these syntactic constraints were applied only locally. A second ERP component, distinct from the N400, was elicited primarily by congruent closed-class words.
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ISSN:0090-502X
1532-5946
DOI:10.3758/BF03198500