TY - THES A1 - Yadav, Himanshu T1 - A computational evaluation of feature distortion and cue weighting in sentence comprehension T1 - Eine komputationale Evaluation von Feature-Verfälschung und Cue-Gewichtung in der Satzverarbeitung N2 - Successful sentence comprehension requires the comprehender to correctly figure out who did what to whom. For example, in the sentence John kicked the ball, the comprehender has to figure out who did the action of kicking and what was being kicked. This process of identifying and connecting the syntactically-related words in a sentence is called dependency completion. What are the cognitive constraints that determine dependency completion? A widely-accepted theory is cue-based retrieval. The theory maintains that dependency completion is driven by a content-addressable search for the co-dependents in memory. The cue-based retrieval explains a wide range of empirical data from several constructions including subject-verb agreement, subject-verb non-agreement, plausibility mismatch configurations, and negative polarity items. However, there are two major empirical challenges to the theory: (i) Grammatical sentences’ data from subject-verb number agreement dependencies, where the theory predicts a slowdown at the verb in sentences like the key to the cabinet was rusty compared to the key to the cabinets was rusty, but the data are inconsistent with this prediction; and, (ii) Data from antecedent-reflexive dependencies, where a facilitation in reading times is predicted at the reflexive in the bodybuilder who worked with the trainers injured themselves vs. the bodybuilder who worked with the trainer injured themselves, but the data do not show a facilitatory effect. The work presented in this dissertation is dedicated to building a more general theory of dependency completion that can account for the above two datasets without losing the original empirical coverage of the cue-based retrieval assumption. In two journal articles, I present computational modeling work that addresses the above two empirical challenges. To explain the grammatical sentences’ data from subject-verb number agreement dependencies, I propose a new model that assumes that the cue-based retrieval operates on a probabilistically distorted representation of nouns in memory (Article I). This hybrid distortion-plus-retrieval model was compared against the existing candidate models using data from 17 studies on subject-verb number agreement in 4 languages. I find that the hybrid model outperforms the existing models of number agreement processing suggesting that the cue-based retrieval theory must incorporate a feature distortion assumption. To account for the absence of facilitatory effect in antecedent-reflexive dependen� cies, I propose an individual difference model, which was built within the cue-based retrieval framework (Article II). The model assumes that individuals may differ in how strongly they weigh a syntactic cue over a number cue. The model was fitted to data from two studies on antecedent-reflexive dependencies, and the participant-level cue-weighting was estimated. We find that one-fourth of the participants, in both studies, weigh the syntactic cue higher than the number cue in processing reflexive dependencies and the remaining participants weigh the two cues equally. The result indicates that the absence of predicted facilitatory effect at the level of grouped data is driven by some, not all, participants who weigh syntactic cues higher than the number cue. More generally, the result demonstrates that the assumption of differential cue weighting is important for a theory of dependency completion processes. This differential cue weighting idea was independently supported by a modeling study on subject-verb non-agreement dependencies (Article III). Overall, the cue-based retrieval, which is a general theory of dependency completion, needs to incorporate two new assumptions: (i) the nouns stored in memory can undergo probabilistic feature distortion, and (ii) the linguistic cues used for retrieval can be weighted differentially. This is the cumulative result of the modeling work presented in this dissertation. The dissertation makes an important theoretical contribution: Sentence comprehension in humans is driven by a mechanism that assumes cue-based retrieval, probabilistic feature distortion, and differential cue weighting. This insight is theoretically important because there is some independent support for these three assumptions in sentence processing and the broader memory literature. The modeling work presented here is also methodologically important because for the first time, it demonstrates (i) how the complex models of sentence processing can be evaluated using data from multiple studies simultaneously, without oversimplifying the models, and (ii) how the inferences drawn from the individual-level behavior can be used in theory development. N2 - Bei der Satzverarbeitung muss der Leser richtig herausfinden, wer wem was angetan hat. Zum Beispiel muss der Leser in dem Satz „John hat den Ball getreten“ herausfinden, wer tat die Aktion des Tretens und was getreten wurde. Dieser Prozess des Identifizierens und Verbindens der syntaktisch verwandte Wörter in einem Satz nennt man Dependency-Completion. Was sind die kognitiven Mechanismen, die Dependency-Completion bestimmen? Eine weithin akzeptierte Theorie ist der Cue-based retrieval. Die Theorie besagt, dass die Dependency-Completion durch eine inhaltsadressierbare Suche nach der vorangetrieben wird Co-Abhängige im Gedächtnis. Der Cue-basierte Abruf erklärt ein breites Spektrum an empirischen Daten mehrere Konstruktionen, darunter Subjekt-Verb-Übereinstimmung, Subjekt-Verb-Nichtübereinstimmung, Plausibilität Mismatch-Konfigurationen und Elemente mit negativer Polarität. Es gibt jedoch zwei große empirische Herausforderungen für die Theorie: (i) Grammatische Sätze Daten aus Subjekt-Verb-Nummer-Dependency, bei denen die Theorie eine Verlangsamung vorhersagt das Verb in Sätzen wie „the key to the cabinet was rusty“ im Vergleich zu „the key to the cabinets was rusty“, aber die Daten stimmen nicht mit dieser Vorhersage überein; und (ii) Daten von Antezedenz-Reflexiv Strukturen, wo eine Leseerleichterung beim reflexiven „the bodybuilder who worked with the trainers injured themselves“ vs. „the bodybuilder who worked with the trainers injured themselves", aber die Daten zeigen keine vermittelnde Wirkung. Die in dieser Dissertation vorgestellte Arbeit widmet sich dem Aufbau einer allgemeineren Theorie von Dependency-Completion, die die beiden oben genannten Datensätze berücksichtigen kann, ohne das Original zu verlieren empirische Abdeckung der Cue-based Retrieval-Annahme. In zwei Zeitschriftenartikeln stelle ich Arbeiten zur Computermodellierung vor, die sich mit den beiden oben genannten empirischen Herausforderungen befassen. Um die Daten der grammatikalischen Sätze aus den Abhängigkeiten der Subjekt-Verb-Nummer-Übereinstimmung zu erklären, schlage ich ein neues Modell vor, das davon ausgeht, dass der Cue-basierte Abruf probabilistisch funktioniert verzerrte Darstellung von Substantiven im Gedächtnis (Artikel I). Dieses hybride Distortion-plus-Retrieval-Modell wurde anhand von Daten aus 17 Studien zu Subjekt-Verb mit den bestehenden Kandidatenmodellen verglichen Nummernvereinbarung in 4 Sprachen. Ich finde, dass das Hybridmodell die bestehenden Modelle übertrifft der Nummernvereinbarungsverarbeitung, was darauf hindeutet, dass die Cue-based Retrieval-Theorie Folgendes umfassen muss: a Annahme von Feature-Verfälschung. Um das Fehlen eines unterstützenden Effekts in antezedens-reflexiven Abhängigkeiten zu berücksichtigen, schlage ich ein individuelles Differenzmodell vor, das innerhalb des Cue-based Retrieval-Frameworks erstellt wurde (Artikel II). Das Modell geht davon aus, dass Individuen sich darin unterscheiden können, wie stark sie eine Syntax gewichten Cue über einem Nummern-Cue. Das Modell wurde an Daten aus zwei Studien zum Antezedenz-Reflexiv angepasst Abhängigkeiten, und die Cue-Gewichtung auf Teilnehmerebene wurde geschätzt. Wir finden, dass ein Viertel von Die Teilnehmer in beiden Studien gewichten bei der Verarbeitung den syntaktischen Cue höher als den numerischen Cue reflexive Abhängigkeiten und die verbleibenden Teilnehmer gewichten die beiden Cue gleichermaßen. Das Ergebnis weist darauf hin, dass das Fehlen des prognostizierten Erleichterungseffekts auf der Ebene der gruppierten Daten von einigen, nicht alle Teilnehmer, die syntaktische Cue höher gewichten als Zahlenhinweise. Allgemeiner gesagt, die Das Ergebnis zeigt, dass die Annahme einer differentiellen Hinweisgewichtung wichtig für eine Theorie von ist Dependency-Completion. Diese Idee der differentiellen Cue-Gewichtung wurde unabhängig unterstützt durch eine Modellierungsstudie zu Subjekt-Verb-Nichteinigungsabhängigkeiten (Artikel III). Insgesamt benötigt der Cue-basierte Abruf, der eine allgemeine Theorie der Abhängigkeitsvervollständigung ist um zwei neue Annahmen aufzunehmen: (i) die im Gedächtnis gespeicherten Substantive können einer Wahrscheinlichkeitsanalyse unterzogen werden Feature-Verfälschung, und (ii) die für den Abruf verwendeten sprachlichen Cue können unterschiedlich gewichtet werden. Das ist das kumulative Ergebnis der in dieser Dissertation vorgestellten Modellierungsarbeit.Die Dissertation leistet einen wichtigen theoretischen Beitrag: Satzverständnis in Der Mensch wird von einem Mechanismus getrieben, der einen hinweisbasierten Abruf, eine probabilistische Merkmalsverzerrung und eine differentielle Hinweisgewichtung annimmt. Diese Einsicht ist theoretisch wichtig, weil es einige gibt unabhängige Unterstützung für diese drei Annahmen in der Satzverarbeitung und im weiteren Gedächtnis Literatur. Die hier vorgestellten Modellierungsarbeiten sind auch methodisch wichtig, weil für die Zum ersten Mal wird gezeigt, (i) wie die komplexen Modelle der Satzverarbeitung evaluiert werden können Daten aus mehreren Studien gleichzeitig zu verwenden, ohne die Modelle zu stark zu vereinfachen, und (ii) wie die Schlussfolgerungen aus dem Verhalten auf individueller Ebene können in der Theorieentwicklung verwendet werden. KW - sentence comprehension KW - individual differences KW - cue-based retrieval KW - memory distortion KW - Approximate Bayesian Computation KW - cue reliability KW - ungefähre Bayessche Komputation KW - Cue-Gewichtung KW - Cue-basierter Retrieval KW - individuelle Unterschiede KW - Darstellung Verfälschung KW - Satzverarbeitung Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-585055 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Lago, Sol A1 - Namyst, Anna A1 - Jäger, Lena Ann A1 - Lau, Ellen T1 - Antecedent access mechanisms in pronoun processing BT - evidence from the N400 T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Previous cross-modal priming studies showed that lexical decisions to words after a pronoun were facilitated when these words were semantically related to the pronoun’s antecedent. These studies suggested that semantic priming effectively measured antecedent retrieval during coreference. We examined whether these effects extended to implicit reading comprehension using the N400 response. The results of three experiments did not yield strong evidence of semantic facilitation due to coreference. Further, the comparison with two additional experiments showed that N400 facilitation effects were reduced in sentences (vs. word pair paradigms) and were modulated by the case morphology of the prime word. We propose that priming effects in cross-modal experiments may have resulted from task-related strategies. More generally, the impact of sentence context and morphological information on priming effects suggests that they may depend on the extent to which the upcoming input is predicted, rather than automatic spreading activation between semantically related words. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 568 KW - coreference KW - semantic priming KW - event-related potentials KW - sentence comprehension KW - N400 Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-433237 SN - 1866-8364 IS - 568 SP - 641 EP - 661 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lago, Sol A1 - Namyst, Anna A1 - Jäger, Lena Ann A1 - Lau, Ellen T1 - Antecedent access mechanisms in pronoun processing BT - evidence from the N400 JF - Language, cognition and neuroscience N2 - Previous cross-modal priming studies showed that lexical decisions to words after a pronoun were facilitated when these words were semantically related to the pronoun's antecedent. These studies suggested that semantic priming effectively measured antecedent retrieval during coreference. We examined whether these effects extended to implicit reading comprehension using the N400 response. The results of three experiments did not yield strong evidence of semantic facilitation due to coreference. Further, the comparison with two additional experiments showed that N400 facilitation effects were reduced in sentences (vs. word pair paradigms) and were modulated by the case morphology of the prime word. We propose that priming effects in cross-modal experiments may have resulted from task-related strategies. More generally, the impact of sentence context and morphological information on priming effects suggests that they may depend on the extent to which the upcoming input is predicted, rather than automatic spreading activation between semantically related words. KW - Coreference KW - semantic priming KW - event-related potentials KW - sentence comprehension KW - N400 Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1566561 SN - 2327-3798 SN - 2327-3801 VL - 34 IS - 5 SP - 641 EP - 661 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - GEN A1 - Garcia, Rowena A1 - Roeser, Jens A1 - Höhle, Barbara T1 - Children's online use of word order and morphosyntactic markers in Tagalog thematic role assignment BT - an eye-tracking study T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - We investigated whether Tagalog-speaking children incrementally interpret the first noun as the agent, even if verbal and nominal markers for assigning thematic roles are given early in Tagalog sentences. We asked five- and seven-year-old children and adult controls to select which of two pictures of reversible actions matched the sentence they heard, while their looks to the pictures were tracked. Accuracy and eye-tracking data showed that agent-initial sentences were easier to comprehend than patient-initial sentences, but the effect of word order was modulated by voice. Moreover, our eye-tracking data provided evidence that, by the first noun phrase, seven-year-old children looked more to the target in the agent-initial compared to the patient-initial conditions, but this word order advantage was no longer observed by the second noun phrase. The findings support language processing and acquisition models which emphasize the role of frequency in developing heuristic strategies (e.g., Chang, Dell, & Bock, 2006). T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 673 KW - Tagalog acquisition KW - sentence comprehension KW - word order KW - morphosyntax KW - thematic role assignment Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-469678 SN - 1866-8364 IS - 673 SP - 533 EP - 555 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lago, Sol A1 - Sloggett, Shayne A1 - Schlüter, Zoe A1 - Chow, Wing Yee A1 - Williams, Alexander A1 - Lau, Ellen A1 - Phillips, Colin T1 - Coreference and Antecedent Representation Across Languages JF - Journal of experimental psychology : Learning, memory, and cognition KW - coreference KW - German KW - English KW - sentence comprehension KW - eye-tracking Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000343 SN - 0278-7393 SN - 1939-1285 VL - 43 SP - 795 EP - 817 PB - American Psychological Association CY - Washington ER - TY - GEN A1 - Felser, Claudia A1 - Phillips, Colin A1 - Wagers, Matthew T1 - Editorial: Encoding and Navigating Linguistic Representations in Memory T2 - Frontiers in psychology KW - sentence comprehension KW - encoding KW - memory retrieval KW - interference KW - anaphor resolution KW - agreement processing KW - filler-gap dependencies Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00164 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 8 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Husain, Samar A1 - Vasishth, Shravan A1 - Srinivasan, Narayanan T1 - Integration and prediction difficulty in Hindi sentence comprehension: Evidence from an eye-tracking corpus JF - Journal of Eye Movement Research N2 - This is the first attempt at characterizing reading difficulty in Hindi using naturally occurring sentences. We created the Potsdam-Allahabad Hindi Eyetracking Corpus by recording eye-movement data from 30 participants at the University of Allahabad, India. The target stimuli were 153 sentences selected from the beta version of the Hindi-Urdu treebank. We find that word- or low-level predictors (syllable length, unigram and bigram frequency) affect first-pass reading times, regression path duration, total reading time, and outgoing saccade length. An increase in syllable length results in longer fixations, and an increase in word unigram and bigram frequency leads to shorter fixations. Longer syllable length and higher frequency lead to longer outgoing saccades. We also find that two predictors of sentence comprehension difficulty, integration and storage cost, have an effect on reading difficulty. Integration cost (Gibson, 2000) was approximated by calculating the distance (in words) between a dependent and head; and storage cost (Gibson, 2000), which measures difficulty of maintaining predictions, was estimated by counting the number of predicted heads at each point in the sentence. We find that integration cost mainly affects outgoing saccade length, and storage cost affects total reading times and outgoing saccade length. Thus, word-level predictors have an effect in both early and late measures of reading time, while predictors of sentence comprehension difficulty tend to affect later measures. This is, to our knowledge, the first demonstration using eye-tracking that both integration and storage cost influence reading difficulty. KW - reading KW - Hindi KW - eye-tracking KW - sentence comprehension KW - integration cost KW - storage cost Y1 - 2015 SN - 1995-8692 VL - 8 IS - 2 PB - International Group for Eye Movement Research CY - Bern ER - TY - THES A1 - Burmester, Juliane T1 - Linguistic and visual salience in sentence comprehension T1 - Linguistische und visuelle Salienz im Satzverständnis BT - evidence from behavioural and electrophysiological studies BT - Evidenz aus behavioralen and elektrophysiologischen Studien N2 - Interlocutors typically link their utterances to the discourse environment and enrich communication by linguistic (e.g., information packaging) and extra-linguistic (e.g., eye gaze, gestures) means to optimize information transfer. Psycholinguistic studies underline that ‒for meaning computation‒ listeners profit from linguistic and visual cues that draw their focus of attention to salient information. This dissertation is the first work that examines how linguistic compared to visual salience cues influence sentence comprehension using the very same experimental paradigms and materials, that is, German subject-before-object (SO) and object-before-subject (OS) sentences, across the two cue modalities. Linguistic salience was induced by indicating a referent as the aboutness topic. Visual salience was induced by implicit (i.e., unconscious) or explicit (i.e., shared) manipulations of listeners’ attention to a depicted referent. In Study 1, a selective, facilitative impact of linguistic salience on the context-sensitive OS word order was found using offline comprehensibility judgments. More precisely, during online sentence processing, this impact was characterized by a reduced sentence-initial Late positivity which reflects reduced processing costs for updating the current mental representation of discourse. This facilitative impact of linguistic salience was not replicated by means of an implicit visual cue (Study 2) shown to modulate word order preferences during sentence production. However, a gaze shift to a depicted referent as an indicator of shared attention eased sentence-initial processing similar to linguistic salience as revealed by reduced reading times (Study 3). Yet, this cue did not modulate the strong subject-antecedent preference during later pronoun resolution like linguistic salience. Taken together, these findings suggest a significant impact of linguistic and visual salience cues on sentence comprehension, which substantiates that both the information delivered via language and via the visual environment is integrated into the mental representation of the discourse; but, the way how salience is induced is crucial to its impact. N2 - In der alltäglichen Kommunikation optimieren Gesprächspartner den Informationstransfer typischerweise durch linguistische und extra-linguistische, visuelle Hinweise (z.B. Blickbewegungen, Zeigegesten), mittels derer sie ihre Äußerungen mit dem Diskursumfeld verknüpfen. Psycholinguistische Studien unterstreichen, dass Zuhörer für das Verstehen von Sätzen sowohl von linguistischen als auch visuellen Hinweisreizen profitieren, die ihre Aufmerksamkeit auf saliente Informationen lenken. Ziel dieser Dissertation ist es, zu charakterisieren, ob und inwiefern visuelle im Vergleich zu linguistischer Salienz das Satzverständnis beeinflusst. Linguistische Salienz wurde durch das Einführen eines Referenten, als sog. Topik, induziert. Visuelle Salienz wurde durch implizite (unbewusste) oder explizite (bewusste) Manipulationen der Aufmerksamkeit von erwachsenen StudienteilnehmerInnen auf einen visuell abgebildeten Referenten hervorgerufen. Im Fokus der drei Studien dieser Dissertation steht die Untersuchung des Einflusses von linguistischer und visueller Salienz auf die satzinitiale Verarbeitung von kanonischen Subjekt-Verb-Objekt (SO)- und nicht-kanonischen Objekt-Verb-Subjekt (OS)-Sätzen im Deutschen, wobei in beiden Modalitäten dieselben experimentellen Paradigmen verwendet werden. Studie 1 liefert Evidenz für einen selektiven, erleichternden Einfluss von zuvor induzierter linguistischer Salienz auf das Verstehen von OS-Sätzen. Dieser Einfluss linguistischer Salienz zeigte sich sowohl nach der Präsentation der Zielsätze, nämlich anhand behavioraler Daten zur Beurteilung des Verständnisses, als auch während des Lesens von OS-Sätzen, nämlich in Form einer satzinitialen, reduzierten späten Positivierung (sog. Late Positivity) in den ereigniskorrelierten Potentialen der elektrophysiologischen Messung. Dieser erleichternde Einfluss der linguistischen Salienz wurde nicht durch die implizite, visuelle Manipulation der Aufmerksamkeit der StudienteilnehmerInnen auf einen visuell abgebildeten Referenten repliziert (Studie 2). In Studie 3 weist die explizite, intentionale Manipulation der Aufmerksamkeit der StudienteilnehmerInnen mittels der Blickbewegung einer (virtuellen) Person auf einen visuell abgebildeten Referenten jedoch auf eine satzinitiale Verarbeitungserleichterung in Form verkürzter Lesezeiten von SO- und OS-Sätzen hin. Dieser Effekt visueller Salienz ähnelte zwar dem Einfluss linguistischer Salienz während des satzinitialen Lesens, unterschied sich jedoch von dieser während der anschließenden Pronomeninterpretation. Zusammengefasst liefern die Ergebnisse dieser Dissertation Evidenz für einen signifikanten Einfluss linguistischer und visueller Salienz auf das Satzverständnis, wobei die kontextuelle Einbettung von Salienzmerkmalen eine entscheidende Rolle für die Integration von Information in die mentale Diskursrepräsentation spielt. KW - sentence processing KW - sentence comprehension KW - linguistic salience KW - visual salience KW - aboutness topic KW - German word order KW - information structure KW - discourse context KW - mental representation KW - Satzverarbeitung KW - Satzverständnis KW - linguistische Salienz KW - visuelle Salienz KW - Topik KW - Wortstellung im Deutschen KW - Informationsstruktur KW - Diskurskontext KW - mentale Repräsentation Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-443155 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Malyutina, Svetlana A1 - Laurinavichyute, Anna A1 - Terekhina, Maria A1 - Lapin, Yevgeniy T1 - No evidence for strategic nature of age-related slowing in sentence processing JF - Psychology and aging N2 - Older adults demonstrate a slower speed of linguistic processing, including sentence processing. In nonlinguistic cognitive domains such as memory, research suggests that age-related slowing of processing speed may be a strategy adopted in order to avoid potential error and/or to spare “cognitive resources.” So far, very few studies have tested whether older adults’ slower processing speed in the linguistic domain has a strategic nature as well. To fill this gap, we tested whether older adults can maintain language processing accuracy when a faster processing speed is enforced externally. Specifically, we compared sentence comprehension accuracy in younger and older adults when sentences were presented at the participant’s median self-paced reading speed versus twice as fast. We hypothesized that an external speed increase will cause a smaller accuracy decline in older than younger adults because older adults tend to adopt self-paced processing speeds “further away” from their performance limits. The hypothesis was not confirmed: The decline in accuracy due to faster presentation did not differ by age group. Thus, we found no evidence for strategic nature of age-related slowing of sentence processing. On the basis of our experimental design, we suggest that the age-related slowing of sentence processing is caused not only by motor slowdown, but also by a slowdown in cognitive processing KW - aging KW - processing speed KW - sentence comprehension KW - language and aging KW - processing strategies Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000302 SN - 0882-7974 SN - 1939-1498 VL - 33 IS - 7 SP - 1045 EP - 1059 PB - American Psychological Association CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Czypionka, Anna A1 - Spalek, Katharina A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell A1 - Krifka, Manfred T1 - On the interplay of object animacy and verb type during sentence comprehension in German: ERP evidence from the processing of transitive dative and accusative constructions JF - Linguistics : an interdisciplinary journal of the language sciences N2 - Comprehension of transitive sentences relies on different kinds of information, like word order, case marking, and animacy contrasts between arguments. When no formal cues like case marking or number congruency are available, a contrast in animacy helps the parser to decide which argument is the grammatical subject and which the object. Processing costs are enhanced when neither formal cues nor animacy contrasts are available in a transitive sentence. We present an ERP study on the comprehension of grammatical transitive German sentences, manipulating animacy contrasts between subjects and objects as well as the verbal case marking pattern. Our study shows strong object animacy effects even in the absence of violations, and in addition suggests that this effect of object animacy is modulated by the verbal case marking pattern. KW - sentence comprehension KW - animacy KW - case marking KW - ERP KW - German Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2017-0031 SN - 0024-3949 SN - 1613-396X VL - 55 SP - 1383 EP - 1433 PB - De Gruyter Mouton CY - Berlin ER -