Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-29-2009
Abstract
We investigated the processing of violations of the verb position in Dutch, in a group of healthy subjects, by measuring event-related potentials (ERPs) through electroencephalography (EEG). In Dutch, the base position of the verb is clause final, but in matrix clauses, the finite verb is in second position, a construction known as Verb Second. In embedded clauses, the finite verb remains in its clause-final base position. The results show that ungrammatical placement of finite verbs in second position in embedded clauses yields a P600 response, which suggests that the parser treats this type of violation as a clear syntactic anomaly. This is in contrast to accounts by which a general preference for subject–verb–object word order in languages like Dutch is reflected by an absence of P600 effects in response to violations of Verb Second.
Recommended Citation
Den Ouden, D.B. & Bastiaanse, R. (2009) The electrophysiological manifestation of Dutch Verb Second violations. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 38, 3, 201-219. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-009-9106-6
Peer Reviewed
1
Copyright
The authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 License
Comments
This article was originally published in Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, volume 38, in 2009. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-009-9106-6