Distinguishing between Different Syntactic Roles of Identical Words in Normal Reading: an ERP Study

Separating between semantic and syntactic aspects of language processing in the brain is a difficult task. In an attempt to distinguish between the two, many studies so far have measured responses to semantic or syntactic violations in reading comprehension tasks. However, this methodology may be inaccurate in describing semantic and syntactic processing during normal reading. In this study, we use a novel task, measuring responses to identical target words as they assume different syntactic roles. All sentences presented in the task are syntactically correct sentences without lexical-semantic anomalies. We present results from a behavioral experiment, testing the validity of the experimental design, and results from a pilot ERP study, measuring brain responses to the difference in the syntactic role of the target words. We conclude that the proposed design is valid and may be used to shed light on semantic and syntactic processing during language comprehension, in normal reading.