TY - JOUR A1 - Vogel, Ralf A1 - Frisch, Stefan T1 - The resolution of case conflicts BT - a pilot study JF - Linguistics in Potsdam N2 - This paper reports the results of a pilot study on the resolution of case conflicts in German free relative constructions. Section 1 gives a brief introduction into the phenomenon, section 2 presents the experiment and its results, section 3 ends the paper with a brief more general discussion. Y1 - 2003 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-32466 SN - 1616-7392 SN - 1864-1857 VL - 21 SP - 91 EP - 103 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schlesewsky, Matthias A1 - Frisch, Stefan T1 - Nominative case as a multidimensional default JF - Linguistics in Potsdam N2 - The present paper addresses a current view in the psycholinguistic literature that case exhibits processing properties distinct from those of other morphological features such as number (cf. Fodor & Inoue, 2000; Meng & Bader, 2000a/b). In a speeded-acceptability judgement experiment, we show that the low performance previously found for case in contrast to number violations is limited to nominative case, whereas violations involving accusative and dative are judged more accurately. The data thus do not support the proposal that case per se is associated with special properties (in contrast to other features such as number) in reanalysis processes. Rather, there are significant judgement differences between the object cases accusative and dative on the one hand and the subject nominative case on the other. This may be explained by the fact that nominative has a specific status in German (and many other languages) as a default case. Y1 - 2003 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-32447 SN - 1616-7392 IS - 21 SP - 61 EP - 72 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schlesewsky, Matthias A1 - Fanselow, Gisbert A1 - Frisch, Stefan T1 - Case as a trigger for reanalysis BT - some arguments from the processing of double case ungrammaticalities in German JF - Linguistics in Potsdam N2 - In the recent literature there is a hypothesis that the human parser uses number and case information in different ways to resolve an initially incorrect case assignment. This paper investigates what role morphological case information plays during the parser’s detection of an ungrammaticality or its recognition that a reanalysis is necessary. First, we compare double nominative with double accusative ungrammaticalities in a word by word, speeded grammaticality task and in this way show that only double nominatives lead to a so-called ”illusion of grammaticality” (a low rate of ungrammaticality detection). This illusion was found to disappear when the second argument was realized by a pronoun rather than by a full definite determiner phrase, i.e. when the saliency of the second argument was increased. Thus, the accuracy in recognizing an ungrammaticality induced by the case feature of the second argument is dependent on the type of this argument. Furthermore, we found that the accuracy in detecting such case ungrammaticalities is distance sensitive insofar as a shorter distance leads to a higher accuracy. The results are taken as support for an ”expectationdriven” parse strategy in which the way the parser uses the information of a current input item depends on the expectation resulting from the parse carried out so far. By contrast, ”input-driven” parse strategies, such as the diagnosis model (Fodor & Inoue, 1999) are unable to explain the data presented here. Y1 - 2003 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-32431 SN - 1616-7392 SN - 1864-1857 IS - 21 SP - 31 EP - 60 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Saddy, Douglas A1 - Drenhaus, Heiner A1 - Frisch, Stefan T1 - Processing polarity items : Contrastive licensing costs N2 - 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 Y1 - 2004 SN - 0093-934X ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Frisch, Stefan A1 - Schlesewsky, Matthias A1 - Wegner, H. T1 - The interaction of morphological case and word order constraints : Cross-linguistic ERP evidence from German, Russian and Finnish Y1 - 2005 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Frisch, Stefan A1 - Schlesewsky, Matthias T1 - The resolution of case conflicts from a neurophysiological perspective N2 - We present two ERP experiments examining the resolution of language processing conflicts involving the multidimensional linguistic feature case, which determines processing in both syntactic and interpretive respects. Ungrammatical German structures with two identically case-marked arguments (double subject or double object constructions) were tested. In earlier studies, double subject constructions have been shown to elicit a biphasic pattern consisting of an N400 effect (a marker of thematic integration problems) followed by a P600 effect (a marker of syntactic ill-formedness). Here, we compare double nominative (subject case) constructions with double datives (indirect object case; Experiment 1) and double accusatives (direct object case; Experiment 2). All types of double case ungrammaticalities elicited a biphasic N400-P600 response. However, double datives differed from double nominatives in that they elicited a larger P600, suggesting that the ill-formedness is more salient in structures with two dative arguments. Double accusatives, by contrast, elicited a stronger N400 in comparison to double nominatives, suggesting that they induce more severe semantic-thematic integration problems. The results demonstrate that the human language comprehension system is sensitive to fine grained linguistic distinctions between different cases and utilizes these in its attempts to solve processing conflicts. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved Y1 - 2005 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Frisch, Stefan A1 - Saddy, Douglas A1 - Friederici, A. D. T1 - Cutting a long story (too) short Y1 - 2000 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Frisch, Stefan A1 - Hahne, A. A1 - Friederici, A. D. T1 - Word category and verb-argument structure information in the dynamics of parsing N2 - One of the core issues in psycholinguistic research concerns the relationship between word category information and verb-argument structure (e.g. transitivity) information of verbs in the process of sentence parsing. In two experiments (visual versus auditory presentation) using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), we addressed this question by presenting sentences in which the critical word simultaneously realized both a word category and a transitivity violation. ERPs for sentences with both types of violation clustered with the patterns for sentences with a word category violation only, but were different from the patterns elicited by argument structure violations in isolation, since only the latter elicited an N400 ERP component. The finding that an argument structure violation evoked an N400 only if the phrase structure of the respective sentence was correct suggests that a successful integration of the word category information of a verb functionally precedes the application of its argument structure information. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved Y1 - 2004 SN - 0010-0277 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Frisch, Stefan A1 - Beim Graben, Peter A1 - Schlesewsky, Matthias T1 - Parallelizing grammatical functions : P600 and P345 reflect different cost of reanalysis N2 - It is well-known from psycholinguistic literature that the human language processing system exhibits preferences when sentence constituents are ambiguous with respect to their grammatical function. Generally, many theories assume that an interpretation towards the subject is preferred in such cases. Later disambiguations which contradict such a preference induce enhanced processing difficulty (i.e. reanalysis) which reflects itself in late positive deflections (P345/P600) in event-related brain potentials (ERPs). In the case of phoric elements such as pronouns, a second strategy is known according to which an ambiguous pronoun preferentially receives the grammatical function that its antecedent has (parallel function strategy). In an ERP study, we show that this strategy can in principle override the general subject preference strategy (known for both pronominal and nonpronominal constituents) and induce an object preference, in case that the pronoun's antecedent is itself an object. Interestingly, the revision of a subject preference leads to a P600 component, whereas the revision of an object preference induces an earlier positivity (P345). In order to show that the latter component is indeed a positivity and not an N400-like negativity in the same time range, we apply an additional analysis based on symbolic dynamics which allows to determine the polarity of an ERP effect on purely methodological grounds. With respect to the two positivities, we argue that the latency differences reflect qualitative differences in the reanalysis processes Y1 - 2004 SN - 0218-1274 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Frisch, Stefan A1 - Beim Graben, Peter T1 - Finding needles in haystacks : Symbolic resonance analysis of event-related potentials unveils different processing demands N2 - Previous ERP studies have found an N400-P600 pattern in sentences in which the number of arguments does not match the number of arguments that the verb can take. In the present study, we elaborate on this question by investigating whether the case of the mismatching object argument in German (accusative/direct object versus dative/ indirect object) affects processing differently. In general, both types of mismatches elicited a biphasic N400 P600 response in the ERP. However, traditional voltage average analysis was unable to reveal differences between the two mismatching conditions, that is, between a mismatching accusative versus dative. Therefore, we employed a recently developed method on ER-P data analysis, the symbolic resonance analysis (SRA), where EEG epochs are symbolically encoded in sequences of three symbols depending on a given parameter, the encoding threshold. We found a larger proportion of threshold crossing events with negative polarity in the N400 time window for a mismatching dative argument compared to a mismatching accusative argument. By contrast, the proportion of threshold crossing events with positive polarity was smaller for dative in the P600 time window. We argue that this difference is due to the phenomenon of "free dative" in German. This result also shows that the SRA provides a useful tool for revealing ERP differences that cannot be discovered using the traditional voltage average analysis. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved Y1 - 2005 ER -