Electrophysiological Evidence for Sentence Comprehension - Wings

could, in fact, be the focus of the sentence, the very information that is intended to be
transmitted. The ERP data in the ‘tense’ and ‘quantifier’ experiment show that a certain
kind of grammatical (syntactic) error – in RRG described on a separate, operator
projection, elicits a semantics-like ERP response. This could be interpreted as evidence
for mapping between the operator projection and a set of semantic relations as defined in
various sorts of modal logic, as suggested above. An augmentation of RRG linking
mechanism with a new one, one that links operators and modal logic operators can be
suggested, as well – this enterprise would be, however, beyond the scope of this study.
5.2. Children With TLD and Children With SLI
5.2.1. Adult control group
The second group of experiments was meant to provide insight into the developmental
aspect of sentence processing by comparing three groups of participants: adults (as a
baseline), children with typical language development and children with Specific
Language Impairment. All groups of participants took part in the two experiments in
which case and tense, i.e. constituent and operator projection were manipulated. The
results for the adults are similar to the results in the first two experiments. Figures 33 and
34 show the overview of the results for the ‘case-chi’ and ‘tense-chi’ experiments
obtained in a group of 10 healthy adults.
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