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Semantic and syntactic ambiguities in Czech: an ERP study

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2023

Abstract

Event-related potentials (ERPs) are an important tool in research of language processing and language competence. Perhaps the most widely studied ERP related to language, and in particular to sentence processing, is the N400, which is characterized by negative deflection peaking about 400 milliseconds after the onset of a stimulus violating semantic predictions.

Another, slightly later ERP component, is the P600, which is a positive wave starting about 600 milliseconds after the onset of syntactic violation (Osterhout & Holcomb, 1992). Here we tested whether N400 and P600 occur for semantic and syntactic violations in Czech, a to-date understudied language from the syntactic ERP perspective.