1. Some comments on the topic of this session
Peter Hagoort
SLE Conference
Poznan, September 12, 2014

2. The topic

3. The topic
My comments relate to the processing consequences of this insight.
“… there is the important fact (unrecognized in the parsing and comprehension literature) that, in cases of a question-answer-driven topic-comment structure, all that is needed for comprehension and interpretation is an identification of the comment – the topic being already available. In the vast majority of cases, therefore, the main task of the interpretation machinery consists in the identification of the comment …”
Seuren,2009, p. 238

4. Information structure (IS)
IS refers to the way of linking novel/important information with given information. (Halliday, 1967; Jackendoff, 2002)
e.g. What vegetables did mum buy to cook today?
Today mum bought eggplant to cook.
Behavioral results suggest that focused information receives more attentional resources and is processed more deeply. (Cutler & Fodor, 1979; Birch & Rayner, 1997; Ward & Sturt, 2007)
non-focus
focus

5. skull
dura mater
pia mater
axon

6. The recording of event related brain potentials

7. The recording of event related brain potentials

8. MEG

9. MEG: Sentence reading (n=102); sensor-level
“The author decided to pay the lawyer ….”

10. N400 effect

11. Unifying semantic and world knowledge
“Dutch trains are yellow and very crowded.”
(correct)
“Dutch trains are white and very crowded.”
(world knowledge violation)
“Dutch trains are sour and very crowded.”
(semantic violation)

12. Dutch trains are white ….

13. ERP effects of semantic and world knowledge violations
Hagoort, Hald, Bastiaansen, & Petersson, Science, 2004

14. The P600: sensitive to syntax

15. Research question
How does IS modulate the depth of syntactic processing?
(Wang, Bastiaansen, Yang & Hagoort, PLoS ONE, 2012)

16. How did we test it? Design: Materials (Originally in Dutch):
2 Syntactic (Correct, Incorrect)
2 Context (Focus, Non-focus)
Materials (Originally in Dutch):
Focus
Wie bestelt er een taxi na het feest? (Dutch)
Who orders a taxi after the party? (English)
Non-focus
Wanneer bestelt men een taxi? (Dutch)
When orders someone a taxi? (English)
Correct
Na afloop van het feest bestellen de nogal boze gasten een taxi.
After the ending of the party order the rather angry guests a taxi.
Incorrect
* Na afloop van het feest bestelt de nogal boze gasten een taxi.
* After the ending of the party orders the rather angry guests a taxi.

17. Results: P600 effects Focus Non-focus clear P600 effect no P600 effect
Correct
Incorrect uV
0.4
0.8
1.2
-0.15 4 6 -2 -4
0.2
0.6
1.0 s 2 Cz
Focus
Correct
Incorrect Cz
Non-focus s s
clear P600 effect
no P600 effect

18. (Wang, Bastiaansen, Yang & Hagoort, PLoS ONE, 2012)
Conclusions
Focused information: full syntactic analysis.
Non-focused information: shallow syntactic processing.
(Wang, Bastiaansen, Yang & Hagoort, PLoS ONE, 2012)

19. Research question
How does IS modulate the depth of semantic processing?

20. (Wang, Hagoort, & Yang, Brain Res., 2009)
Method
Materials: (Originally in Chinese)
Focus
Non-focus
What vegetables did mum buy to cook today?
Today mum bought eggplant to cook.
Who bought vegetables to cook today?
Today mum bought beef to cook.
Congruent
Incongruent
(Wang, Hagoort, & Yang, Brain Res., 2009)

21. Non-focus, incongruent
Results uV
Non-focus, incongruent
Non-focus, congruent s
-0.2
0.05
0.3
0.55
0.8
1.05
-2.5
-5.0
2.5
5.0
7.5 CZ uV s
-0.2
0.05
0.3
0.55
0.8
1.05
-2.5
-5.0
2.5
5.0
7.5 CZ
Focus, incongruent
Focus, congruent
Focus
Non-focus
What vegetables did mum buy to cook today?
Today mum bought eggplant to cook.
Today mum bought beef to cook.
Who bought vegetables to cook today?
Today mum bought eggplant to cook.
Today mum bought beef to cook.
Congruent
Incongruent
N400 effect
reduced N400 effect

22. (Wang, Hagoort, & Yang, Brain Res., 2009)
Conclusions
Focused information: deep semantic processing
Non-focused information: shallow semantic processing
(Wang, Hagoort, & Yang, Brain Res., 2009)

23. Interim conclusion
We have found that markers of information structure modulate the amplitude of semantic (N400) and syntactic-like (P600) ERP effects.
Information that is in focus (or new) gets processed more deeply.
Relevant in the context of “good-enough processing” (Ferreira & Patson, 2007), or the “windowing of attention in language” (Talmy, 1996).

24. Hypothesis:
Syntactic, prosodic and other markers of Information Structure are built-in linguistic devices that trigger the contribution of the attentional networks in the brain, in the surface of in-depth processing of the focus constituent.

25. The brain in action

26. A localizer of the auditory attention network

28. C+P+ (Congruent, With pitch accent)
“According to the book of Genesis, NOAH brought two animals of each kind
on the ark”
C-P+ (Incongruent, With pitch accent)
“According to the book of Genesis, MOSES brought two animals of each kind
C+P- (Congruent, Without pitch accent)
“According to the book of Genesis, Noah brought two animals of each kind
C-P- (Incongruent, Without pitch accent)
“According to the book of Genesis, Moses brought two animals of each kind

29. Attentional localizer
Under conditions of increased processing complexity, general attentional networks are recruited by prosodic marking of information structure.

30. Conclusion
The topic-comment structure of ongoing discourse triggers extra processing of the focus constituent (the new information). This is in line with the ideas of Seuren (e.g., Seuren, 2009)

31. N400 effect

32. Thanks Pieter

33. Intonation and information structure (IS)
Another way to mark IS: pitch accent
(context) What vegetable did mum buy to cook today？
Today mum bought eggplant to cook.
(pitch accent) Today mum bought EGGPLANT to cook.
top-down
non-focus
focus
ACCENTED
unaccented
bottom-up
non-focus
focus

34. (Wang, Bastiaansen, Yang, & Hagoort, Neuropsychologia, 2011)
Research question
How do accentuation and context together influence the depth of semantic processing ?
(Wang, Bastiaansen, Yang, & Hagoort, Neuropsychologia, 2011)

35. (Wang, Bastiaansen, Yang, & Hagoort, Neuropsychologia, 2011)
Methods
Design:
Context (Focus: F+, Non-focus: F-)
Semantic congruency (Congruent: C+, Incongruent: C-)
Accentuation (Accented: A+, Unaccented: A-)
Dependent variable:
N400 effects in response to the semantic congruity
Influence on the N400 effect by four combinations of conditions:
F+A+, F+A-, F-A+, F-A-
(Wang, Bastiaansen, Yang, & Hagoort, Neuropsychologia, 2011)

36. Results: N400 effect F+ A+: focus, accented F+ A-: focus, unaccented
F- A+: non-focus, accented
F- A-: non-focus, unaccented
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
1.2 2 -2 -4
-0.2 uV s Cz

37. Conclusions F+ A+: The most elaborate semantic processing.
F- A- = F+ A- = F- A+:
The lack of focus marking, or the mismatch between context and accentuation led to shallow processing.
Context and accentuation are highly interactive.