Relating ERP-Effects to Theories of Belief Update and Combining Systems

Abstract

A major challenge for any attempt at combining linguistics with empirical neurophysiological data from brain research, like ERPs for example, is to give an answer to the question of how the gap between psycholinguistic and formal models of specific aspects of language on the one hand and the neural architecture underlying neurophysiological measures on the other can be bridged (Baggio et al. 2010). An interesting research program based on the extension of the event calculus in Van Lambalgen & Hamm 2005 was launched in Baggio et al (2007, 2008, 2010) where it was shown how a correlation between two known ERP-effects, the N400 and the LAN, and semantic phenomena like the progressive can be established. In this paper we will present an alternative formal theory which is based on the technique of combining systems and in which the dynamics of information change is separated from the more static aspects of knowledge representation. Using this multi-layered architecture, we hypothesize that the LAN is related to the process of updating a discourse model in the light of new information about changes in the world.