We explore the nature of the oscillatory dynamics in the EEG of subjects reading sentences that contain a semantic violation. More specifically, we examine whether increases in theta ([Approximately]3-7 Hz) and gamma (around 40 Hz) band power occur in response to sentences that were either semantically correct or contained a semantically…

This study examined the effects that the acoustic-phonetic structure of a stimulus exerts on the processes by which lexical candidates compete for activation. An auditory lexical decision paradigm was used to investigate whether shortening the VOT of an initial voiceless stop consonant in a real word results in the activation of the…

In principle, comprehenders might always make immediate commitments to the interpretation of expressions (full commitment) or wait until such decisions are necessary (minimal commitment; Frazier & Rayner, 1990). One interesting case involves decisions about telicity: whether expressions refer to events that are determinate versus indeterminate…

In addition to information about phonology, morphology and syntax, lexical entries contain semantic information about participants (e.g., Agent). However, the traditional criteria for determining how much participant information is lexically encoded have proved unreliable. We have proposed two semantic criteria (obligatoriness and selectivity)…

Through much is known about the N400 component, an event-related EEG potential that is sensitive to semantic manipulations, it is unclear whether modulations of N400 amplitude reflect automatic processing, controlled processing, or both. We examined this issue using a semantic judgment task that manipulated local and global contextual cues. Word…

This study investigated how normal subjects and Broca's and Wernicke's aphasics integrate thematic information incrementally using syntax, lexical-semantics, and pragmatics in a simple active declarative sentence. Three priming experiments were conducted using an auditory lexical decision task in which subjects made a lexical decision on a…

Four experiments support the hypothesis that syntactically relevant information about verbs is encoded in the lexicon in semantic event templates. A verb's event template represents the participants in an event described by the verb and the relations among the participants. The experiments show that lexical decision times are longer for verbs with…

An event-related potentials (ERPs) study examined word-to-text integration processes across sentence boundaries. In a two-sentence passage, the accessibility of a referent for the first content word of the second sentence (the target word) was varied by the wording of the first sentence in one of the following ways: lexically (explicitly using…

There is a consensus that Alzheimer's disease (AD) impairs semantic information, with one of the first markers being anomia i.e. an impaired ability to name items. Doubts remain, however, about whether this naming impairment differentially affects items from the living and nonliving knowledge domains. Most studies have reported an impairment for…

A theoretical distinction is made between the growth of word meaning and the development of word sense in Vygotsky's terms. A recall from semantic memory task and the semantic differential were used to operationalize these two conceptions of meaning in a study of 72 children aged 5 to 10 years. Results replicated typical findings for the growth of…

Johnson-Laird's reply to Fodor's book, Language of Thought (LOT) and to Fodor's position on Tom Swift often missed the point or were out of context. Doctrines expressed in LOT were quite compatible with those cited in Tom Swift. (RD)

Studied whether two-year olds use multiple syntactic frames to help determine meanings of novel verbs. The multiple frames tested were combinations of transitive and intransitive frames in two alternation patterns. As predicted, the Causative pattern was more predictive of actions involving physical causation, and the Omitted Object pattern was…

Reports on the development of an NLP (natural language processing) component for processing the free-text comments on life insurance applications for evaluation by an underwriting expert system. A sublanguage grammar approach with strong reliance on semantic word classes is described. Highlights include lexical analysis, adjacency analysis, and…

The present fMRI study of semantic fluency for animal and tool names provides further evidence for category-specific brain activations, and reports task-related changes in effective connectivity among defined cerebral regions. Two partially segregated systems of functional integration were highlighted: the tool condition was associated with an…

This study investigates the online comprehension of Determiner Phrases (DPs) as a function of the given-new distinction in two-sentence texts in German and further focuses on DPs whose interpretation depends on inferential information (so-called "bridging relations"). Previous reaction time studies report an advantage of given over new…