When politeness processing encounters failed syntactic/semantic processing

Abstract

Previous studies have elucidated the neural mechanism of syntactic/semantic processing and pragmatic processing. However, the exact mechanisms by which these two aspects of processing interact during language comprehension remain unknown. In this event-related brain potential study, we examined the interaction between politeness processing and local syntactic/semantic processing of a phrase. We used a full factorial design that crossed politeness consistency with local syntactic/semantic coherence. Politeness violations elicited a P200 effect in the 190–320 ms range, centro-parietally distributed positivity in the 360–866 ms range, and pure local syntactic/semantic violation elicited a broad distributed positivity in the 362–868 ms range. Crucially, we found that event-related potential responses elicited by combined politeness and syntactic/semantic violations resemble those elicited by separate syntactic/semantic violations. These results indicated that local syntactic/semantic processing has a functional primacy over politeness processing. Furthermore, our results support the blocking hypothesis from a politeness processing perspective instead of the independent hypothesis.

Keywords

• Event-related potentials (ERPs)
• P600
• Politeness processing
• Syntactic processing
• Semantic processing