Unlike information-seeking questions (ISQs), rhetorical questions (RQs) do not ask for information but make a point. Behavioural data showed that this difference in illocution type is mainly signalled by intonation, with RQs requiring more specific tonal patterns than ISQs. This EEG study investigated the processing of tonally marked ISQs and RQs, when the illocution type was congruently or incongruently cued by a preceding mnemonic visual stimulus. We predicted a prosodic expectancy positivity (PEP) in incongruent vs. congruent conditions and earlier detection of incongruence in tonally marked ISQs. ERP results and an exploratory analysis of oscillatory brain activity showed congruency effects for tonally marked ISQs and RQs and different timing: PEP-like effects and alpha suppression occurred earlier in tonal ISQs than RQs. Beta-band suppression emerged at the utterance's end for both. The results show that tonally marked RQs require a more nuanced prosodic analysis of the entire utterance for interpretation.

Our ability to predict upcoming events is a fundamental component of human cognition. One way in which we do so is by exploiting temporal regularities in sensory signals: the ticking of a clock, falling of footsteps and the motion of waves each provide a structure that may facilitate anticipation. But how strong is the effect of rhythmic anticipation on perception? And to what degree do people vary in their ability to capitalize on these regularities? In 2015, Hickok et al. introduced a behavioural paradigm to assess how a rhythmic auditory stimulus affects perception of subsequent targets (Hickok G, Farahbod H, Saberi K. 2015 The rhythm of perception: entrainment to acoustic rhythms induces subsequent perceptual oscillation. Psychol. Sci. 26, 1006–1013. (doi:10.1177/0956797615576533)). They tested five listeners and found that perception (target detection accuracy) fluctuated rhythmically just like the sound rhythm. Here, we replicate the original finding, assess how likely the finding is to be observed for any individual, and quantify effect size in a large sample of adult listeners (n = 149). We introduce a model-based analysis approach that allows separate estimates of amplitude and phase information in target detection responses, and quantifies effect size for individual listeners. Together our results strongly support the presence of oscillatory influences on target detection accuracy, as well as substantial variability in the magnitude of this effect across listeners.

The processing of context-dependent expressions has mostly been studied using metaphors, irony or indirect requests. We add to the literature by monitoring the processing of modal particles (MPs) like German ruhig. These lexemes are ambiguous between a modal particle reading and a counterpart reading. While the counterpart contributes at-issue or propositional meaning to the sentence and affects truth conditions, the modal particle contributes non-at-issue meaning, expressing speaker attitudes or linking the sentence to the discourse. In the present study we disambiguated the readings via a preceding context and analysed event-related potentials and the oscillatory brain responses to critical sentences with identical surface forms. Our results show that in comparison to their counterparts, modal particles are associated with enhanced P600 amplitudes on the target lexemes and in the spillover region, and with enhanced P200 amplitudes on target lexemes. In addition, modal particles do not show the gamma power enhancement visible for counterparts. We interpret our findings as showing increased processing cost for modal particles due to them contributing to a higher dimension of meaning. The differences in oscillatory brain activity between both readings may reflect the lack of at-issue meaning contribution for modal particles. Our findings are in line with reports of enhanced P600 amplitudes for semantically and pragmatically complex readings in the literature on context-dependent expressions, and open various future ways of research to check the claims of different models on the processing of complex semantic and pragmatic information.

Discourse particles are little words that provide non-at-issue content to sentences, reshaping the illocutionary force of an utterance. Among them, question-sensitive discourse particles (QDiPs), like German denn, are subject to a number of interacting syntactic, semantic and pragmatic licensing constraints, offering a unique window into language processing at the interfaces. We present EEG data on the processing of QDiPs in different types of interrogatives (eliciting either syntactic/semantic or pragmatic QDiP licensing), along with QDiPs in declaratives (i.e., unlicensed QDiPs resulting in ill-formed structures). The analysis of event-related potentials shows an increased negativity for QDiPs relative to a non-QDiP baseline in the P300/N400 time window; this is more pronounced for unlicensed QDiPs (in declaratives) than licensed QDiPs (in interrogatives). In the P600 time window, QDiPs elicit more positive-going curves than non-QDiPs, with this pattern wearing off for licensed, relative to unlicensed, QDiPs at later timepoints. Time-frequency analysis of the same EEG data reveals increased theta-band activity for non-QDiPs relative to QDiPs. We interpret the lower theta-band activity for QDiPs as reflecting the fact that QDiPs contribute non-at-issue meaning, but not at-issue meaning. Taken together, our findings showcase different aspects of QDiP processing; ranging from ERP correlates for straightforward licensing violations (late P600) and for increased processing cost during successful licensing (early P600) to oscillatory reflections of the ‘semantic weakness’ of discourse particles (lower theta-band activity). The two types of EEG analysis complement each other and tap into different aspects of language processing. (*Kharaman and Czypionka share first authorship.)

Animacy is an intrinsic semantic property of words referring to living things. A long line of evidence shows that words with animate referents require lower processing costs during word recognition than words with inanimate referents, leading among others to a decreased N400 amplitude in reaction to animate relative to inanimate objects. In the current study, we use this animacy effect to provide evidence for access to the semantic properties of constituents in German noun-noun compounds. While morphological decomposition of noun-noun compounds is well-researched and illustrated by the robust influence of lexical constituent properties like constituent length and frequency, findings for semantic decomposition are less clear in the current literature. By manipulating the animacy of compound modifiers and heads, we are able to manipulate the relative ease of lexical access strictly due to intrinsic semantic properties of the constituents. Our results show additive effects of constituent animacy, with a higher number of animate constituents leading to gradually attenuated N400 amplitudes. We discuss the implications of our findings for current models of complex word recognition, as well as stimulus construction practices in psycho-and neurolinguistic research.

Author(s): Eulitz, Carsten; Smolka, Eva | Abstract: This study investigated the effects of semantic transparency and familiarity on the lexical processing of German compounds. We measured event-related potentials (ERPs) while participants saw compound triplets that held the same head like /garten/ (‘garden’): (a) semantically transparent compounds /Gemusegarten/ (‘vegetable garden’), (b) semantically opaque compounds /Kindergarten/ (‘kinder garden’), and (c) possible but nonexistent novel compounds /Gesichtsgarten/ (‘face garden’). Participants made nonword decisions to compounds with a scrambled constituent /Semuregarten/. ERP potentials for semantically transparent and opaque compounds were alike, irrespective of whether the manipulation was on the modifier or the head. By contrast, novel compounds showed strong N400 effects relative to both transparent and opaque compounds. These findings indicate that – during compound processing – the brain differentiates between familiar and novel, but not between transparent and opaque. Compound processing independent of semantic compositionality differs from that in other Indo-European languages and stresses the importance of cross-language comparisons.

In sentence comprehension, animate-animate argument sequences are associated with higher processing costs than animate-inanimate argument sequences. This increase in processing costs is reflected in enhanced N400 components in ERP measurements. In German, a language that morphologically marks case on the arguments of verbs, this increase in processing cost is only found for standard nominative-accusative assigning verbs, but not for nominative-dative assigning verbs. So far, it is unclear whether this interplay between object animacy and case marking in sentence comprehension reflects the non-standard syntax or semantics of nominative-dative assigning verbs. We present the results of two ERP experiments designed to tease apart syntactic and semantic contributions to lexical case marking effects in sentence comprehension. Our first experiment monitored the interaction of object animacy and case marking for non-separable simple verbs. This experiment revealed an enhanced N400 for animate objects with simple verbs assigning nominativeaccusative, but not for those assigning nominative-dative. Our second experiment monitored the same interaction for separable particle verbs. This experiment revealed an enhanced N400 for animate relative to inanimate objects, both for particle verbs assigning nominative-accusative and nominative-dative. Our results suggest that the attenuation of the object animacy effect for simple nominativedative verbs reflects the processing of syntactic, rather than semantic, differences between verb classes.

Abstract This paper investigates the effects of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in L1 Turkish of Turkish-German bilingual speakers. The study examines whether overlapping structures in the two languages result in influences of the dominant L2 German on the weaker L1 Turkish in morphosyntactic processing. Plural-marking on noun phrases was chosen for investigation since it provides an ideal test case and it constitutes partial overlap in German and Turkish. Since various definitions of CLI describe effects of this phenomenon that relate to language processing, behavioral measures are utilized in this research. The analyses of accuracy rates reveal that the two languages are clearly differentiated from each other. However, the bilingual speakers perform better with respect to the construction, which is only available in Turkish, compared to the overlapping structure between the languages. This indicates that the speakers separate the two languages from each other. However, interlanguage cue competition is at play in morphosyntactic processing in the L1 heritage language. The effects of heritage language proficiency are also examined by means of comparing high- and low-to-intermediate heritage speakers. The proficiency effects on L1 processing can be found in processing speed but not in accuracy rates. High-to-intermediate speakers do not differ from monolinguals in their processing speed, whereas the low-to-intermediate speakers perform slower than both the monolinguals and the high-to-intermediate heritage speakers. We discuss these findings within Modular Online Growth and Use of Language (MOGUL), which is a processing-based linguistic framework that accounts for the interaction of the two languages in the bilingual mind.

Idioms are a special case of multi-word expressions in that their meaning cannot be compositionally constructed from the meaning of the single constituents. The question of how the idiomatic meaning is assembled remains an unsettled issue in psycholinguistic research. The present study examines whether the figurative meaning of an idiom is recognized if critical idiomatic constituents, such as the noun, verb, or preposition, are modified. In three paraphrase experiments, participants saw (a) the canonical idiomatic phrase (e.g., She reached for the stars), (b) the idiomatic phrase with a modified constituent (e.g., She reached/grasped for/at the stars/planets), or (c) a matched literal control sentence (e.g., She reached for the sweets) and rated on a scale from 1 (not at all) - 7 (completely) how strongly the sentence reflected the meaning of a paraphrase of the idiom (e.g., She has always aspired to unattainable goals). Sentence type and constituent type strongly affected paraphrase ratings with highest ratings for canonical idiomatic phrases, lowest ratings for control sentences, and ratings in between for idioms with modified constituents. Further, idioms with modified verbs were rated higher in matching the figurative meaning than idioms with modified prepositions or nouns. Overall these findings indicate that the figurative meaning was assembled in spite of the modifications. We conclude that idioms are not fully ‘semantically fixed’ but allow for some flexibility in the processing of idioms. Modified constituents that activate meanings similar to those of the canonical constituents will co-activate the figurative meaning of the idiom together with the other idiomatic constituents. We discuss psycholinguistic models on idiom comprehension.

In spoken language, reductions of word forms occur regularly and need to be accommodated by the listener. Intriguingly, this accommodation is usually achieved without any apparent effort. The neural bases of this cognitive skill are not yet fully understood. We here presented participants with reduced words that were either preceded by a related or an unrelated visual prime and compared electric brain responses to reduced words with those to their full counterparts. In time-domain, we found a positivity between 400 and 600 ms differing between reduced and full forms. A later positivity distinguished primed and unprimed words and was modulated by reduction. In frequency-domain, alpha suppression was stronger for reduced than for full words. The time- and frequency-domain reduction effects converge towards the view that reduced words draw on attention and memory mechanisms. Our data demonstrate the importance of interactive processing of bottom-up and top-down information for the comprehension of reduced words.

Multiword expressions (MWEs), such as noun compounds (e.g. nickname in English, and Ohrwurm in German), complex verbs (e.g. give up in English, and aufgeben in German) and idioms (e.g. break the ice in English, and das Eis brechen in German), may be interpreted literally but often undergo meaning shifts with respect to their constituents. Theoretical, psycholinguistic as well as computational linguistic research remain puzzled by when and how MWEs receive literal vs. meaning-shifted interpretations, what the contributions of the MWE constituents are to the degree of semantic transparency (i.e., meaning compositionality) of the MWE, and how literal vs. meaning-shifted MWEs are processed and computed. This edited volume presents an interdisciplinary selection of seven papers on recent findings across linguistic, psycholinguistic, corpus-based and computational research fields and perspectives, discussing the interaction of constituent properties and MWE meanings, and how MWE constituents contribute to the processing and representation of MWEs. The collection is based on a workshop at the 2017 annual conference of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS) that took place at Saarland University in Saarbrucken, Germany

In many languages, rhetorical questions (RQs) are produced with different prosodic realizations than string-identical information-seeking questions (ISQs). RQs typically have longer constituent durations and breathier voice quality than ISQs and differ in nuclear accent type. This paper reports on an identification experiment (Experiment 1) and an EEG experiment (Experiment 2) on German wh-questions. In the identification experiment, we manipulated nuclear pitch accent type, voice quality and constituent duration and participants indicated whether they judged the realization as ISQ or RQ. The results showed additive effects of the three factors, with pitch accent as strongest predictor. In the EEG experiment, participants heard the stimuli in two contexts, triggering an ISQ or RQ (blocked). We manipulated pitch accent type and voice quality, resulting in RQ-coherent and ISQ-coherent stimuli, based on the outcome of Experiment 1. Results showed a prosodic expectancy positivity (PEP) for prosodic realizations that were incoherent with ISQ-contexts with an onset of ∼120ms after the onset of the word with nuclear accent. This effect might reflect the emotional prosodic aspect of RQs. Taken together, participants use prosody to resolve the ambiguity and event-related potentials (ERPs) react to prosodic realizations that do not match contextually triggered expectations.

In case-marking languages like German, nonstandard nominative-dative verbs lead to enhanced processing costs. So far, it is unclear if these case-marking effects reflect the special syntax or semantics of nominative-dative verbs. We present the results of two ERP experiments aimed to disentangle semantic and syntactic contributions to lexical case-marking by manipulating object animacy and case-marking for two verb types: simple verbs (nonstandard syntax and semantics for nominative-dative verbs) and particle verbs (nonstandard semantics only). Simple nominative-dative verbs show effects of case-marking, and no animacy effects. Particle verbs show no effects of case-marking, and animacy effects for nominative-accusative and nominative-dative verbs. Our findings suggest that lexical case-marking effects reflect the special syntax, rather than semantics, of simple nominative-dative verbs.

A central issue in visual and spoken word recognition is the lexical representation of complex words—in particular, whether the lexical representation of complex words depends on semantic transparency: Is a complex verb like understand lexically represented as a whole word or via its base stand, given that its meaning is not transparent from the meanings of its parts? To study this issue, a number of stimulus characteristics are of interest that are not yet available in public databases of German. This article provides semantic association ratings, lexical paraphrases, and vector-based similarity measures for German verbs, measuring (a) the semantic transparency between 1,259 complex verbs and their bases, (b) the semantic relatedness between 1,109 verb pairs with 432 different bases, and (c) the vector-based similarity measures of 846 verb pairs. Additionally, we include the verb regularity of all verbs and two counts of verb family size for 184 base verbs, as well as estimates of age of acquisition and age of reading for 200 verbs. Together with lemma and type frequencies from public lexical databases, all measures can be downloaded along with this article. Statistical analyses indicate that verb family size, morphological complexity, frequency, and verb regularity affect the semantic transparency and relatedness ratings as well as the age of acquisition estimates, indicating that these are relevant variables in psycholinguistic experiments. Although lexical paraphrases, vector-based similarity measures, and semantic association ratings may deliver complementary information, the interrater reliability of the semantic association ratings for each verb pair provides valuable information when selecting stimuli for psycholinguistic experiments.

German particle verbs consist of a base and a particle, two constituents which occupy separate positions in main clauses, but share one lexical entry. It is still unclear if the combination of particles and bases during sentence comprehension is lexical, syntactic or dual in nature. Using behavioural and ERP measurements, we investigated lexical access and sentence integration of split particle verbs in German two-argument sentences. Our results show that the integration of split particle verbs violating sentence structure or lexical constraints leads to both lexical and syntactic processing difficulty. This extends earlier comparable findings reporting only lexical access difficulties, and suggests that the parse is not immediately abandoned upon encountering a nonexistent particle verb. The integration of grammatical particle verbs assigning lexical case did not lead to measurable processing difficulties. We discuss the impact of this finding for current accounts of the role of lexical case marking in sentence comprehension.

The lexical representation of words in Indo-European languages is generally assumed to be driven by meaning compositionality. This study examined the lexical representation of complex verbs in German, which is a morphologically rich representative of Indo-European languages. Three overt priming experiments manipulated prime–target relations between morphological, semantic, and form relatedness. Base verbs (e.g., binden, 'bind') were preceded by derivations that were semantically related (zubinden, 'tie') or semantically unrelated (entbinden, 'deliver'), by purely semantically related (zuschnüren, 'tie'), form-related (abbilden, 'depict'), or unrelated (abholzen, 'deforest') verbs. To ensure that the procedures were sensitive to semantic and form processing, semantic associates (Messer–Gabel, 'knife–fork') and form controls (Bordell–Bord, 'brothel–board'; beschreiben–reiben, 'describe–rub') were added in Experiment 3. To examine whether lexical representation is affected by modality, prime presentation was further varied between visual (Exp. 1 and 3) and auditory (Exp. 2). Semantic facilitation (Exp. 3) and form inhibition (Exp. 2 and 3) were not reliable across experiments, while morphological facilitation was strong and unaffected by semantic relatedness in all three experiments. That is, the priming from semantically opaque derivations was equivalent to that from transparent derivations. These findings indicate that the lexical representation of complex verbs refers to the base regardless of meaning compositionality. Lexical representations in German thus differ from those in other Indo-European languages. This new evidence points to the necessity to encompass cross-linguistic variations in the modeling of lexical representation.

The processing of the German plural has been examined in a range of behavioral and neurophysiological studies. A number of studies so far showed differences between the processing of the default plural form -s and the irregular plural form -(e)n. While previous studies focused on the examination of generally two plural categories (e.g. -(e)n versus -s), the current study aimed at examining four German plural categories with different morpheme endings and violating them cross-wise. The results of the current auditory event-related (ERP) and reaction time study show general similarities between the more acoustically salient plural categories. In the early latency range from 200 - 400 ms -n violated by -s plural (and the cross-condition) act differently from the -e versus -er plural violations (and the cross-conditions) but in the later time windows only violation effects are visible. Processing differences may be explained by the morphological characteristics of the plural categories and/or phonetic differences between the suffixes.

Multiple lexical representations overlapping with the input (cohort neighbors) are temporarily activated in the listener's mental lexicon when speech unfolds in time. Activation for cohort neighbors appears to rapidly decline as soon as there is mismatch with the input. However, it is a matter of debate whether or not they are completely excluded from further processing. We recorded behavioral data and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in auditory-visual word onset priming during a lexical decision task. As primes we used the first two syllables of spoken German words. In a carrier word condition, the primes were extracted from spoken versions of the target words (ano-ANORAK "anorak"). In a cohort neighbor condition, the primes were taken from words that overlap with the target word up to the second nucleus (ana taken from ANANAS "pineapple"). Relative to a control condition, where primes and targets were unrelated, lexical decision responses for cohort neighbors were delayed. This reveals that cohort neighbors are disfavored by the decision processes at the behavioral front end. In contrast, left-anterior ERPs reflected long-lasting facilitated processing of cohort neighbors. We interpret these results as evidence for extended parallel processing of cohort neighbors. That is, in parallel to the preparation and elicitation of delayed lexical decision responses to cohort neighbors, aspects of the processing system appear to keep track of those less efficient word candidates.

The precise structure of speech sound representations is still a matter of debate. In the present neurobiological study, we compared predictions about differential sensitivity to speech contrasts between models that assume full specification of all phonological information in the mental lexicon with those assuming sparse representations (only contrastive or otherwise not predictable information is stored). In a passive oddball paradigm, we studied the contrast sensitivity as reflected in the mismatch negativity (MMN) response to changes in the manner of articulation, as well as place of articulation of consonants in intervocalic positions of nonwords (manner of articulation: [edi ~ eni], [ezi ~ eni]; place of articulation: [edi ~ egi]). Models that assume full specification of all phonological information in the mental lexicon posit equal MMNs within each contrast (symmetric MMNs), that is, changes from standard [edi] to deviant [eni] elicit a similar MMN response as changes from standard [eni] to deviant [edi]. In contrast, models that assume sparse representations predict that only the [ezi] ~ [eni] reversals will evoke symmetric MMNs because of their conflicting fully specified manner features. Asymmetric MMNs are predicted, however, for the reversals of [edi] ~ [eni] and [edi] ~ [egi] because either a manner or place property in each pair is not fully specified in the mental lexicon. Our results show a pattern of symmetric and asymmetric MMNs that is in line with predictions of the featurally underspecified lexicon model that assumes sparse phonological representations. We conclude that the brain refers to underspecified phonological representations during speech perception.