Processing of temporary syntactic ambiguity in Italian "who"-questions: a study with event-related potentials

Neurosci Lett. 2005 Mar 29;377(2):91-6. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2004.11.074. Epub 2004 Dec 19.

Abstract

This study investigated the processing of direct Italian "who"-questions, containing a temporary ambiguity of the syntactic role (subject/object) of the initial pronoun. To this aim we measured event-related potentials (ERPs) evoked by the disambiguating verbal agreement word and by the following ones. Results showed two positive deflections, corresponding to a P300 and to a P600, only at the target verb of the object-first extraction, the condition which has been demonstrated to be less preferred by speakers. The functional meaning of this positive complex, similar to patterns already reported for German subject/object ambiguous relative clauses, was discussed with reference both to results obtained in other languages using similar sentences and to psycholinguistic parsing models.

Publication types

  • Comparative Study

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Analysis of Variance
  • Evoked Potentials / physiology*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Language
  • Male
  • Multilingualism*
  • Reading*
  • Semantics*
  • Time Factors