@article{Stede2004,
  author    = {Stede, Manfred},
  title     = {Does discourse processing need discourse topics?},
  issn      = {0301-4428},
  year      = {2004},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{Fery2004,
  author    = {F{\´e}ry, Caroline},
  title     = {German accent revisited},
  year      = {2004},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{WartenburgerHeekerenBurchertetal.2004,
  author    = {Wartenburger, Isabell and Heekeren, Hauke R. and Burchert, Frank and Heinemann, Steffi and De Bleser, Ria and Villringer, Arno},
  title     = {Neural correlates of syntactic transformations},
  issn      = {1065-9471},
  year      = {2004},
  abstract  = {Many agrammatic aphasics have a specific syntactic comprehension deficit involving processing syntactic transformations. It has been proposed that this deficit is due to a dysfunction of Broca's area, an area that is thought to be critical for comprehension of complex transformed sentences. The goal of this study was to investigate the role of Broca's area in processing canonical and non-canonical sentences in healthy subjects. The sentences were presented auditorily and were controlled for task difficulty. Subjects were asked to judge the grammaticality of the sentences while their brain activity was monitored using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging. Processing both kinds of sentences resulted in activation of language-related brain regions. Comparison of non-canonical and canonical sentences showed greater activation in bilateral temporal regions; a greater activation of Broca's area in processing antecedent-gap relations was not found. Moreover, the posterior part of Broca's area was conjointly activated by both sentence conditions. Broca's area is thus involved in general syntactic processing as required by grammaticality judgments and does not seem to have a specific role in processing syntactic transformations. (C) 2004 Wiley-Liss, Inc},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{SaddyUriagereka2004,
  author    = {Saddy, Douglas and Uriagereka, J.},
  title     = {Measuring language},
  issn      = {0218-1274},
  year      = {2004},
  abstract  = {The study of language, its processing and its bearing on human cortical processes are all extensive domains of investigation in their own right. In this overview tutorial we limit ourselves to a sample of core illustrative issues. Our central aim is to demonstrate how complexity within the language faculty arises from two a priori distinct sources: the computational complexity inherent in the grammar of the language system itself and the procedural complexity resulting from marshalling processing resources in order to produce or interpret utterances that correspond to the grammar. Distinguishing between these two sources of complexity is a current goal in investigations of the human language faculty. The combination of quantitative approaches with newer qualitative approaches to the analysis of electro-cortical behaviour associated with carefully controlled language paradigms represents a new approach to clarifying this central issue},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{SaddyDrenhausFrisch2004,
  author    = {Saddy, Douglas and Drenhaus, Heiner and Frisch, Stefan},
  title     = {Processing polarity items : Contrastive licensing costs},
  issn      = {0093-934X},
  year      = {2004},
  abstract  = {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. (C) 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{Hoehle2004,
  author    = {H{\"o}hle, Barbara},
  title     = {Sprachwahrnehmung und Spracherwerb im ersten Lebensjahr},
  year      = {2004},
  language  = {de}
}
@article{BurchertSwobodaMollDeBleser2004,
  author    = {Burchert, Frank and Swoboda-Moll, Maria and De Bleser, Ria},
  title     = {Tense and agreement in clausal representations : Evidence from German agrammatic aphasia},
  year      = {2004},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{HoehleKieferSchulzetal.2004,
  author    = {H{\"o}hle, Barbara and Kiefer, D. and Schulz, A. and Weissenborn, E. and Schmitz, M.},
  title     = {Functional elements in infants' speech processing : the role of determiners in syntactic categorization of lexical elements},
  year      = {2004},
  abstract  = {How do children determine the syntactic category of novel words? In this article we present the results of 2 experiments that investigated whether German children between 12 and 16 months of age can use distributional knowledge that determiners precede nouns and subject pronouns precede verbs to syntactically categorize adjacent novel words. Evidence from the head-turn preference paradigm shows that, although 12- to 13-month-olds cannot do this, 14- to 16- month-olds are able to use a determiner to categorize a following novel word as a noun. In contrast, no categorization effect was found for a novel word following a subject pronoun. To understand this difference we analyzed adult child- directed speech. This analysis showed that there are in fact stronger co-occurrence relations between determiners and nouns than between subject pronouns and verbs. Thus, in German determiners may be more reliable Cues to the syntactic category of an adjacent novel word than are subject pronouns. We propose that the capacity to syntactically categorize novel words, demonstrated here for the first time in children this young, mediates between the recognition of the specific morphosyntactic frame in which a novel word appears and the word-to-world mapping that is needed to build up a semantic representation for the novel word},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{BeimGrabenFrisch2004,
  author    = {Beim Graben, Peter and Frisch, Stefan},
  title     = {Is it positive or negative? On determining ERP components},
  issn      = {0018-9294},
  year      = {2004},
  abstract  = {In most experiments using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), there is a straightforward way to define-on theoretical grounds-which of the conditions tested is the experimental condition and which is the control condition. It, however, theoretical assumptions do not give sufficient and unambiguous information to decide this question, then the interpretation of an ERP effect becomes difficult, especially if one takes into account that certain effects can be both a positivity or a negativity on the basis of the morphology of the pattern as well as with respect to peak latency (regard for example, N400 and P345). Exemplified with an ERP experiment on language processing, we present such a critical case and offer a possible solution on the basis of nonlinear data analysis. We show that a generalized polarity histogram, the word statistics of symbolic dynamics, is in principle able to distinguish negative going ERP components from positive ones when an appropriate encoding strategy, the half wave encoding is employed. We propose statistical criteria which allow to determine ERP components on purely methodological grounds},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{BeimGrabenJurishSaddyetal.2004,
  author    = {Beim Graben, Peter and Jurish, B. and Saddy, Douglas and Frisch, Stefan},
  title     = {Language processing by dynamical systems},
  issn      = {0218-1274},
  year      = {2004},
  abstract  = {We describe a part of the stimulus sentences of a German language processing ERP experiment using a context- free grammar and represent different processing preferences by its unambiguous partitions. The processing is modeled by deterministic pushdown automata. Using a theorem proven by Moore, we map these automata onto discrete time dynamical systems acting at the unit square, where the processing preferences are represented by a control parameter. The actual states of the automata are rectangles lying in the unit square that can be interpreted as cylinder sets in the context of symbolic dynamics theory. We show that applying a wrong processing preference to a certain input string leads to an unwanted invariant set in the parsers dynamics. Then, syntactic reanalysis and repair can be modeled by a switching of the control parameter - in analogy to phase transitions observed in brain dynamics. We argue that ERP components are indicators of these bifurcations and propose an ERP-like measure of the parsing model},
  language  = {en}
}