title: Processing gapped verbs.
abstract: The time course was investigated of the processing of "missing" verbs in gapping constructions, such as John ate the hamburger, and Bill __ the hotdog. Native speakers of Dutch silently read Dutch sentences with and without gapping while their EEG was recorded. A left anterior negativity (LAN) was found at the first possible position at which the gapped verb could be detected, at least, for in participants who performed poorly in an end-of-sentence acceptability judgment task. This suggests that some readers do not anticipate the gapped verb, but infer the gapped verb in a bottom-up fashion, resulting in a LAN. Second, a P600 effect was observed for gapping versus no-gapping conditions, the early part of which was unaffected by plausibility. This suggests that the semantic and syntactic integration of a gapped verb is a relatively late process, and involves mechanisms similar to integrating a wh-phrase object with its verb.
authors.affiliation: Department of Linguistics, University of Florida, Box 115454, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA. kaan@ufl.edu
authors.forename: Edith
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Kaan
authors.forename: Carlie
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Overfelt
authors.forename: Do
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Tromp
authors.forename: Frank
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Wijnen
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011932:Reading