Grammatical markers switch roles and elicit different electrophysiological responses under shallow and deep semantic requirements.

Static knowledge about the grammar of a natural language is represented in the cortico-subcortical system. However, the differences in dynamic verbal processing under different cognitive conditions are unclear. To clarify this, we conducted an electrophysiological experiment involving a semantic priming paradigm in which semantically congruent or incongruent word sequences (prime nouns-target verbs) were randomly presented.

Early components of event-related potentials related to semantic and syntactic processes in the Japanese language.

Brain activities were compared between semantic and syntactic processing in the Japanese language using event-related potentials with a 58-ch EEG system. We previously found that semantic violations elicited N400 and syntactic violations elicited P600 but not early left anterior negativity (ELAN) or left anterior negativity (LAN) using a relatively long stimulus presentation time (1 s). In the present study, we adopted a shorter stimulus presentation time (0.