Processing polarity items: Contrastive licensing costs

We describe an experiment that investigated the failure to license polarity items in German using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). The results reveal distinct processing reflexes associated with failure to license positive polarity items in comparison to failure to license negative polarity it...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Brain and language 2004-07, Vol.90 (1), p.495-502
Main Authors: Saddy, Douglas, Drenhaus, Heiner, Frisch, Stefan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Cerebral Cortex - physiology
Complexity
ERP
Evoked Potentials, Visual - physiology
Female
German
Humans
Integration
Language Processing
Lexicon
Licensing
Male
Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology
Polarity
Reading
Semantics
Syntax
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Summary:We describe an experiment that investigated the failure to license polarity items in German using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). The results reveal distinct processing reflexes associated with failure to license positive polarity items in comparison to failure to license negative polarity items. Failure to license both negative and positive polarity items elicited an N400 component reflecting semantic integration cost. Failure to license positive polarity items, however, also elicited a P600 component. The additional P600 in the positive polarity violations may reflect higher processing complexity associated with a negative operator. This difference between the two types of violation suggests that the processing of negative and positive polarity items does not involve identical mechanisms.
ISSN:0093-934X
1090-2155
DOI:10.1016/S0093-934X(03)00470-X