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dc.contributor.authorAlemán Bañón, Jose
dc.contributor.authorRothman, Jason
dc.date.accessioned2020-02-25T14:58:49Z
dc.date.available2020-02-25T14:58:49Z
dc.date.issued2019-04-24
dc.description.abstractThe present study uses event-related potentials to examine subject–verb person agreement in Spanish, with a focus on how markedness with respect to the speech participant status of the subject modulates processing. Morphological theory proposes a markedness distinction between first and second person, on the one hand, and third person on the other. The claim is that both the first and second persons are <i>participants</i> in the speech act, since they play the <i>speaker</i> and <i>addressee</i> roles, respectively. In contrast, third person refers to whomever is neither the <i>speaker</i> nor the <i>addressee</i> (i.e., it is unmarked for person). We manipulated speech participant by probing person agreement with both first-person singular subjects (e.g., <i>yo</i>…<i>lloro</i> “I…cry-<sub>1ST PERSON-SG</sub>”) and third-person singular ones (e.g., <i>la viuda</i>…<i>llora</i> “the widow…cry-<sub>3RD PERSON-SG</sub>”). We also manipulated agreement by crossing first-person singular subjects with third-person singular verbs (e.g., <i>yo</i>…∗<i>llora</i> “I…cry-<sub>3RD PERSON-SG</sub>”) and vice versa (e.g., <i>la viuda</i>…∗<i>lloro</i> “the widow…cry-<sub>1ST PERSON-SG</sub>”). Results from 28 native speakers of Spanish revealed robust positivities for both types of person violations, relative to their grammatical counterparts between 500 and 1000 ms, an effect that shows a central-posterior distribution, with a right hemisphere bias. This positivity is consistent with the P600, a component associated with a number of morphosyntactic operations (and reanalysis processes more generally). No negativities emerged before the P600 (between 250 and 450 ms), although both error types yielded an anterior negativity in the P600 time window, an effect that has been argued to reflect the memory costs associated with keeping the errors in working memory to provide a sentence-final judgment. Crucially, person violations with a marked subject (e.g., <i>yo</i>…∗<i>llora</i> “I…cry-<sub>3RD PERSON-SG</sub>”) yielded a larger P600 than the opposite error type between 700 and 900 ms. This effect is consistent with the possibility that, upon encountering a subject with marked features, feature activation allows the parser to generate a stronger prediction regarding the upcoming verb. The larger P600 for person violations with a marked subject might index the reanalysis process that the parser initiates when there is a conflict between a highly expected verbal form (i.e., more so than in the conditions with an unmarked subject) and the form that is actually encountered.en_US
dc.identifier.citationAlemán Bañón J, Rothman J. Being a participant matters: Event related potentials show that markedness modulates person agreement in Spanish. Frontiers in Psychology. 2019en_US
dc.identifier.cristinIDFRIDAID 1757968
dc.identifier.doi10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00746
dc.identifier.issn1664-1078
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10037/17504
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.publisherFrontiers Mediaen_US
dc.relation.journalFrontiers in Psychology
dc.rights.accessRightsopenAccessen_US
dc.rights.holderCopyright 2019 The Author(s)en_US
dc.subjectVDP::Humanities: 000::Linguistics: 010::Spanish language: 026en_US
dc.subjectVDP::Humaniora: 000::Språkvitenskapelige fag: 010::Spansk språk: 026en_US
dc.titleBeing a participant matters: Event related potentials show that markedness modulates person agreement in Spanishen_US
dc.type.versionpublishedVersionen_US
dc.typeJournal articleen_US
dc.typeTidsskriftartikkelen_US
dc.typePeer revieweden_US


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