Grammaticalization of prosody in the brain

Abstract

Based on the results from three Event-Related Potential (ERP) studies, we show how the degree of grammaticalization of prosodic features influences their impact on syntactic and morphological processing. Thus, results indicate that only lexicalized word accents influence morphological processing. Furthermore, it is shown how an assumed semi-grammaticalized left-edge boundary tone activates main clause structure without, however, inhibiting subordinate clause structure in the presence of competing syntactic cues