Electrophysiological Evidence for Sentence Comprehension - Wings

Figure 10. The presentation of the stimulus sentences
Each sentence (i.e. the last word of the preceding sentence and the first word of the
following sentence) was separated by the 1700 ms interval. Each computer slide
consisted of one word. However, in the first slide the auxiliary verb came together with
the noun, the subject of the sentence. As the clitic has to come right after the first word in
a sentence, the canonical position of the auxiliary verb was thus preserved. It is
pronounced together with the first word as one word (a word with its clitic is one
phonological word). If the auxiliary were on a separate slide, it would have been read
with an accent, which is ungrammatical and unnatural even when the reader reads
silently. Therefore, throughout the stimulus sentences the clitics were always presented
together with the word which carried the accent. Every 20 – 25 sentences a pause was
inserted (a yellow circle on the screen followed by the cross (+) to prepare the subject for
the continuation of the experiment). Each pause lasts 10 seconds during which the
participants were instructed to blink freely or move head. This was necessary because it
took 25 minutes to complete the experiment and, initially, without the pauses the
participants felt friction and the loss of concentration. The participants were asked to
make grammaticality judgments by pressing one of two buttons on the response pad.
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