Speech rhythm facilitates syntactic ambiguity resolution: ERP evidence

PLoS One. 2013;8(2):e56000. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0056000. Epub 2013 Feb 8.

Abstract

In the current event-related potential (ERP) study, we investigated how speech rhythm impacts speech segmentation and facilitates the resolution of syntactic ambiguities in auditory sentence processing. Participants listened to syntactically ambiguous German subject- and object-first sentences that were spoken with either regular or irregular speech rhythm. Rhythmicity was established by a constant metric pattern of three unstressed syllables between two stressed ones that created rhythmic groups of constant size. Accuracy rates in a comprehension task revealed that participants understood rhythmically regular sentences better than rhythmically irregular ones. Furthermore, the mean amplitude of the P600 component was reduced in response to object-first sentences only when embedded in rhythmically regular but not rhythmically irregular context. This P600 reduction indicates facilitated processing of sentence structure possibly due to a decrease in processing costs for the less-preferred structure (object-first). Our data suggest an early and continuous use of rhythm by the syntactic parser and support language processing models assuming an interactive and incremental use of linguistic information during language processing.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Comprehension
  • Evoked Potentials*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Linguistics
  • Male
  • Reaction Time
  • Speech Perception*
  • Speech*
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

M. Paula Roncaglia-Denissen was supported by the Max Planck International Research Network on Aging (MaxNetAging), Maren Schmidt-Kassow by the German Research Foundation (DFG SCHM 2693/1), and Sonja A. Kotz by the German Research Foundation (DFG KO 2268/1). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.