Prepositions as a hybrid between lexical and functional category: Evidence from an ERP study on German sentence processing

Publication date: November 2019Source: Journal of Neurolinguistics, Volume 52Author(s): Mari Chanturidze, Rebecca Carroll, Esther RuigendijkAbstractIn syntactic theories of word categorization the status of prepositions as belonging to either a lexical (e.g., nouns, verbs) or a functional category (e.g., determiners, complementizers) is under debate. It has also been suggested that prepositions are a hybrid between the two categories depending on their usage. We investigated this classification question empirically in an ERP study with twelve mono-syllabic German prepositions in lexical (e.g., locative prepositions as in on the table) and subcategorized (e.g., selected by the verb as in waiting for) use. Thirty adult participants listened to sentences containing prepositions either in lexical or subcategorized use. Violations to lexical prepositions elicited an N400 – a component typically associated with lexical-semantic processing. Violations to subcategorized prepositions elicited a P600 – a component typically associated with structural/syntactic processing. In addition to lexical and subcategorized prepositions, the processing of sentence-final nouns following each type of preposition was measured. In both cases P600 effects were elicited. In addition to the positive effect, nouns in the context of incongruent lexical prepositions elicited an N400 effect. These qualitatively different processing results for lexical and subcategorized prepositions (and for nouns in th...
Source: Journal of Neurolinguistics - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research