Grammatical category and the neural processing of phrases

Abstract The interlocking roles of lexical, syntactic and semantic processing in language comprehension has been the subject of longstanding debate. Recently, the cortical response to a frequency-tagged linguistic stimulus has been shown to track the rate of phrase and sentence, as well as syllable,...

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Autores principales:	Amelia Burroughs, Nina Kazanina, Conor Houghton
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Nature Portfolio 2021
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/5b256d21f3ba40cd9f91e4acb734b3f6
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:5b256d21f3ba40cd9f91e4acb734b3f62021-12-02T10:48:31ZGrammatical category and the neural processing of phrases10.1038/s41598-021-81901-52045-2322https://doaj.org/article/5b256d21f3ba40cd9f91e4acb734b3f62021-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-81901-5https://doaj.org/toc/2045-2322Abstract The interlocking roles of lexical, syntactic and semantic processing in language comprehension has been the subject of longstanding debate. Recently, the cortical response to a frequency-tagged linguistic stimulus has been shown to track the rate of phrase and sentence, as well as syllable, presentation. This could be interpreted as evidence for the hierarchical processing of speech, or as a response to the repetition of grammatical category. To examine the extent to which hierarchical structure plays a role in language processing we recorded EEG from human participants as they listen to isochronous streams of monosyllabic words. Comparing responses to sequences in which grammatical category is strictly alternating and chosen such that two-word phrases can be grammatically constructed—cold food loud room—or is absent—rough give ill tell—showed cortical entrainment at the two-word phrase rate was only present in the grammatical condition. Thus, grammatical category repetition alone does not yield entertainment at higher level than a word. On the other hand, cortical entrainment was reduced for the mixed-phrase condition that contained two-word phrases but no grammatical category repetition—that word send less—which is not what would be expected if the measured entrainment reflected purely abstract hierarchical syntactic units. Our results support a model in which word-level grammatical category information is required to build larger units.Amelia BurroughsNina KazaninaConor HoughtonNature PortfolioarticleMedicineRScienceQENScientific Reports, Vol 11, Iss 1, Pp 1-10 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Amelia Burroughs Nina Kazanina Conor Houghton Grammatical category and the neural processing of phrases
description	Abstract The interlocking roles of lexical, syntactic and semantic processing in language comprehension has been the subject of longstanding debate. Recently, the cortical response to a frequency-tagged linguistic stimulus has been shown to track the rate of phrase and sentence, as well as syllable, presentation. This could be interpreted as evidence for the hierarchical processing of speech, or as a response to the repetition of grammatical category. To examine the extent to which hierarchical structure plays a role in language processing we recorded EEG from human participants as they listen to isochronous streams of monosyllabic words. Comparing responses to sequences in which grammatical category is strictly alternating and chosen such that two-word phrases can be grammatically constructed—cold food loud room—or is absent—rough give ill tell—showed cortical entrainment at the two-word phrase rate was only present in the grammatical condition. Thus, grammatical category repetition alone does not yield entertainment at higher level than a word. On the other hand, cortical entrainment was reduced for the mixed-phrase condition that contained two-word phrases but no grammatical category repetition—that word send less—which is not what would be expected if the measured entrainment reflected purely abstract hierarchical syntactic units. Our results support a model in which word-level grammatical category information is required to build larger units.
format	article
author	Amelia Burroughs Nina Kazanina Conor Houghton
author_facet	Amelia Burroughs Nina Kazanina Conor Houghton
author_sort	Amelia Burroughs
title	Grammatical category and the neural processing of phrases
title_short	Grammatical category and the neural processing of phrases
title_full	Grammatical category and the neural processing of phrases
title_fullStr	Grammatical category and the neural processing of phrases
title_full_unstemmed	Grammatical category and the neural processing of phrases
title_sort	grammatical category and the neural processing of phrases
publisher	Nature Portfolio
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/5b256d21f3ba40cd9f91e4acb734b3f6
work_keys_str_mv	AT ameliaburroughs grammaticalcategoryandtheneuralprocessingofphrases AT ninakazanina grammaticalcategoryandtheneuralprocessingofphrases AT conorhoughton grammaticalcategoryandtheneuralprocessingofphrases
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Grammatical category and the neural processing of phrases

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