Experiment & Results (congruous vs. 1 st person vs. 3 rd person honorific violation)  Experimental conditions (n=120 sets of sentences) Participants: 26 native Korean speakers Materials: 120 sets of experimental sentences, 220 filler items Procedures: word-by-word, non-cumulative presentations (SOA: 500 ms; ISI: 200 ms)  Results 1 st person honorific violation conditions elicited a P600 compared to congruous conditions (p <.0001). 3 rd person honorific violation conditions elicited a P600 compared to congruous conditions (p <.03). The P600 amplitude was greater for the 1 st person violation than for the 3 rd person violation (p <.03). Discussion & Conclusions Exploring the interface between social cognition and morpho-syntax: an ERP study of Korean subject honorifics Nayoung Kwon 1 & Patrick Sturt 2 1 Konkuk University, 2 University of Edinburgh Background & Research questions  Honorifics in Korean Korean encodes interpersonal relationships in linguistic forms (Sohn, 1999). Subject honorifics are expressed as a suffix –si– on the verb. –si– should agree with the subject in honorific feature (1a). –si– is optional and can be omitted (1b). –si– cannot be used with a subject of low social status (2a) –si– cannot be used with the first person (2b).  Previous ERP results Subject agreement in number & person elicited (a LAN &) a P600 (De Vincenzi et al., 2003; Kaan, 2002; Hagoort et al., 1993; Osterhout & Mobley, 1995) World knowledge or pragmatic violation elicited an N400 (Hagoort et al., 2004; van Berkum et al. 1999; cf. Kuperberg et al. 2003). Mixed results in Japanese: Honorific mismatch elicited an N400 (Inoue & Osterhout, 2005) or a delayed positive shift (1100 to 1400 ms; Sakai et al., 2006) (1) Matching in honorific features (a) Grandpa-nomTV-accwatch-si-decl (b) Grandpa-nomTV-accwatch-decl(optional) (2) Mismatching in honorific features (a) *Kid-nomTV-accwatch-si-decl (b) *I-nomTV-accwatch-si-decl …officials HOPE/HOPES..Dutch trains …yellow/white/sour (Osterhout & Mobley, 1995)(Hagoort et al. 2004)  Research goal: To investigate the cognitive processes underlying subject-verb honorific agreement in Korean, a language with otherwise poor verbal agreement W1W2W3W4 W5W6W7 Congruouslast.nightgrandma-nomlivingroom-atTV-accwatch-si-whilesleep-nomentered 1 st P Incngr last.nightI-nomlivingroom-atTV-accwatch-si-whilesleep-nomentered 3 rd P Incngr last.nightkid-nomlivingroom-atTV-accwatch-si-whilesleep-nomentered translation “Last night, grandma/I/kid fell asleep while watching TV in the living room.” Despite the fact that the honorific marking is based on language users’ perception of relative social hierarchy, the processing of subject-verb honorific agreement is different from the processing of world knowledge violation (Hagoort et al., 2004; van Berkum et al. 1999; cf. Kuperberg et al. 2003). Instead, subject-verb honorific agreement in Korean is grammaticalized in a similar manner to number and person agreement in Indo- European languages (De Vincenzi et al., 2003; Kaan, 2002; Hagoort et al., 1993; Osterhout & Mobley, 1995). Stronger 1 st person violation than 3 rd person violation suggests that honorific marking is more strongly prohibited to occur with 1 st person than 3 rd person regardless of relative social status of the referent. The stronger constraint on the use of honorific marker with the 1 st person suggests that humbling oneself – not honorifying oneself – is a strongly grammaticalized concept in Korean. References De Vincenzi, M. et al. (2003). Differences in the perception and time course of syntactic and semantic violations, Brain & Language, 85, ; Hagoort et al. (1993). The syntactic positive shift (sps) as an erp measure of syntactic processing. Language and Cognitive Processes, 8, ; Hagoort et al. (2004). Integration of word meaning and world knowledge in language comprehension. Science, 304, ; Inoue, K. & Osterhout, L. (2005). An ERP study of Japanese honorification: Are honorific features grammaticalized? Poster Presentation, 18th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Tucson, Arizona; Kaan, E. (2002). Investigating the effects of distance and number interference in processing subject-verb dependencies: An ERP study. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 31, ; Kuberberg, G. et al. (2003). Electrophysiological distinctions in processing conceptual relationships within simple sentences. Cognitive Brain Research, 17, ; Osterhout & Mobley (1995). Event Related Brain Potentials elicited by failure to agree. Journal of Memory and Language, 34, ; Sakai, H. et al. (2006). Mismatch of Social Rank Features Elicits Syntactic Positive Shift: An ERP Study of Japanese Honorific Constructions, Poster presentation, 19th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, City University of New York, 2006, New York; Sohn, H-M. (1999). The Korean Language. Cambridge University Press; Van Berkum J. et al., (1999). Semantic integration in sentences and discourse: evidence from the N400. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 11, 657–671.