Predictive processing of syntactic information: evidence from event-related brain potentials

Several recent event-related potential (ERP) studies have observed a left (anterior) negativity (L(A)N) in (morpho)syntactically well-formed but semantically anomalous sentences, which are often referred to as semantic reversal anomalies (e.g. The window closes someone). Such a L(A)N elicitation for semantic reversal anomalies is not expected under the widely held assumption that LANs are associated with morphosyntactic processing loads and are insensitive to semantic anomalies. This raises the empirical question of why semantic reversal anomalies elicit a L(A)N effect. One possible explanation for this observation can be presented in relation the multi-stream processing model, according to which the independent semantic processing stream challenges an analysis outputted by the morphosyntactic processing stream, leading to a misperception of morphosyntactic ill-formedness. Alternatively, the L(A)N effect may reflect a mismatch between expected and actual syntactic structures. As an inanimate subject triggers the expectation of an intransitive structure rather than an active transitive structure, the input of a transitive verb should violate such an expectation. The present study tests these two hypotheses by manipulating the temporal predictabilities of verbs to examine the underlying cognitive processes of L(A)N effects in semantic reversal anomalies. The results reveal a L(A)N effect for semantic reversal anomalies only when prediction of a verb type was possible, in favour of the latter prediction-based view. The implications of this finding are discussed with respect to predictive processing mechanisms and the architecture of processing systems.