Abstract
This paper reviews a series of electrophysiological experiments on syntactic processing against the background of a psycholinguistic two-stage model of parsing. The data reveal two event-related brain potential components in correlation with syntactic processes: an early left anterior negativity and a late centro-parietal positivity. It is argued that these two components can be correlated with two separate stages of syntactic processing: the early left anterior negativity reflecting first-pass parsing processes and the late positivity reflecting second-pass parsing processes possibly including processes of reanalyses.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bentin, S., McCarthy, G., & Wood, C. C. (1985). Event-related potentials, lexical decision and semantic priming.Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 60, 343–355.
Coulson, S., King, J., & Kutas, M. (1995, March).The late show: The syntactic positive shift meets the late positive component. Paper presented at the Eight Annual CUNY conference on human sentence processing. Tucson.
Daneman, M., & Carpenter, P. A. (1980). Individual differences in working memory and reading.Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19, 450–466.
Donchin, E., & Coles, M. G. H. (1988). On the conceptual foundations of cognitive psychophysiology.Behavior and Brain Science, 11, 408–418.
Fabiani & Donchin, E. (1995). Encoding processes and memory organization: A model of the von Restorff effect.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 21, 1–17.
Frazier, L. (1987). Syntactic processing: Evidence from Dutch.Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 5, 519–560.
Frazier, L., & Fodor, J. D. (1978). The sausage machine: A new two-stage parsing model.Cognition, 6, 291–325.
Friederici, A. D., Hahne, A., & Mecklinger, A. (1996).The temporal structure of syntactic parsing: Early and late ERP effects elicited by syntactic anomalies. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Friederici, A. D., Pfeifer, E., & Hahne, A. (1993). Event-related brain potentials during natural speech processing: Effects of semantic, morphological and syntactic violations.Cognitive Brain Research, 1, 183–192.
Friederici, A. Steinhauer, K., & Mecklinger, A. (1995, March).Syntactic complexity and latency of the late positivity. Paper presented at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society Second Annual Meeting, San Francisco.
Gorrell, P. (1995).Syntax and parsing. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Gunter, T. C., Vos, S. H., & Mulder, G. (1995, March).Syntactic violations and ERPs: P600 or P3b? Paper presented at the Eighth Annual CUNY conference on human sentence processing. Tucson.
Hagoort, P., Brown, C., and Groothusen, J. (1993). The syntactic positive shift as an ERP-measure of syntactic processing.Language and Cognitive Processes, 8, 439–483.
Hahne, A., Friederici, A. D., & Mecklinger, A. (1995). Violations of obligatory versus preferred syntactic sentence structure-the brain differentiates early.Human Brain Mapping (Suppl.), 245.
Holcomb, P. J., & Neville, H. J. (1990). Auditory and visual semantic priming in lexical decision: A comparison using event-related brain potentials.Language and Cognitive Processes, 8, 281–312.
Holmes, V. M., & O'Regan, J. K. (1981). Eye fixation patterns during the reading of relative clause sentences.Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 20, 417–430.
Jaspers, H. H. v. (1958). Report of the committee of methods of clinical examination in electroencephalography.Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 10, 370–375.
King, J., & Just, M. A. (1991). Individual differences in syntactic processing: the role of working memory.Journal of Memory and Language, 30, 580–602.
Kutas, M., & Hillyard, St. A. (1984). Brain potentials during reading reflect word expectancy and semantic association.Nature, 307, 161–165.
Kutas, M., Neville, H. J., & Holcomb, P. J. (1987). A preliminary comparison of the N400 response to semantic anomalies during reading, listening and signing.Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology (Suppl. 39), 325–330.
Kutas, M., & Van Petten, C. (1988). Event-related potential studies of language. In P. K. Ackles, J. R. Jennings, & M. G. H. Coles (Eds.),Advances in psychophysiology (Vol. 3). Greenwich: JAI Press.
MacDonald, M. A., Pearlmutter, N. J., & Seidenberg, M. S. (1994). The lexical nature of syntactic ambiguity resolution.Psychology Review, 101, 676–703.
Mecklinger, A., Schriefers, H., Steinhauer, K., & Friederici, A. D. (1995). The processing of relative clauses varying on syntactic and semantic dimensions: An analysis with event-related potentials.Memory & Cognition, 23, 477–494.
Neville, H. J., Mills, D. L., & Lawson, D. L. (1992). Fractionating language: Different neural subsystems with different sensitive periods.Cerebral Cortex, 2, 244–258.
Neville, H. J., Nicol, J., Barss, A., Forster, K., & Garrett, M. (1991). Syntactically based sentence processing classes: Evidence from event-related brain potentials.Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 3, 155–170.
Osterhout, L., & Holcomb, P. J. (1992). Event-related brain potentials elicited by syntactic anomaly.Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 785–804.
Osterhout, L., Holcomb, P. J., & Swinney, D. A. (1994). Brain potentials elicited by garden path sentences: Evidence of the application of verb information during parsing.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 20, 786–803.
Rayner, K., Carlson, M., & Frazier, L. (1983). The interaction of syntax and during sentence processing: Eye movements in the analysis of semantically biased sentences.Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 22, 358–374.
Rösler, F., Friederici, A. D., Pütz, P., & Hahne, A. (1993). Event-related brain potentials while encountering semantic and syntactic constraint violations.Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 5, 345–362.
Schriefers, H., Friederici, A. D., & Kühn, K. (in press). The processing of local ambiguous relative clauses in German.Journal of Memory and Language.
Tanenhaus, M. K., & Carlson, G. (1989). Lexical structure and language comprehension. In W. Marslen-Wilson (Ed.),Lexical representation and process (pp. 529–561). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Urbach, T. P., Pickering, M., Branigan, H., & Myler, L. A. (1995, March).Event-related potential effects and parsing. Paper presented at Eighth Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Tucson.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Friederici, A.D., Mecklinger, A. Syntactic parsing as revealed by brain responses: First-pass and second-pass parsing processes. J Psycholinguist Res 25, 157–176 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01708424
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01708424