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. 2024 Jul 23;121(30):e2315438121.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.2315438121. Epub 2024 Jul 19.

Information structure in Makhuwa: Electrophysiological evidence for a universal processing account

Rinus G Verdonschot #  1 , Jenneke van der Wal #  2 , Ashley Lewis  1   3 , Birgit Knudsen  1 , Sarah von Grebmer Zu Wolfsthurn  2 , Niels O Schiller  2   4   5 , Peter Hagoort  1   3
Affiliations

Information structure in Makhuwa: Electrophysiological evidence for a universal processing account

Rinus G Verdonschot et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

There is evidence from both behavior and brain activity that the way information is structured, through the use of focus, can up-regulate processing of focused constituents, likely to give prominence to the relevant aspects of the input. This is hypothesized to be universal, regardless of the different ways in which languages encode focus. In order to test this universalist hypothesis, we need to go beyond the more familiar linguistic strategies for marking focus, such as by means of intonation or specific syntactic structures (e.g., it-clefts). Therefore, in this study, we examine Makhuwa-Enahara, a Bantu language spoken in northern Mozambique, which uniquely marks focus through verbal conjugation. The participants were presented with sentences that consisted of either a semantically anomalous constituent or a semantically nonanomalous constituent. Moreover, focus on this particular constituent could be either present or absent. We observed a consistent pattern: Focused information generated a more negative N400 response than the same information in nonfocus position. This demonstrates that regardless of how focus is marked, its consequence seems to result in an upregulation of processing of information that is in focus.

Keywords: Bantu language; EEG; focus; information structure.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests statement:The authors declare no competing interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Main effect of Congruency—N400 time window. ERP waveforms of the congruent (C+; black) and incongruent (C−; red) conditions at the critical word (onset at 0 ms) for the main effect of Congruency (Top Left), and when the critical word was in focus (F+; Top Right) or not in focus (F−; Bottom Left). All waveforms diverge from around 330 to 690 ms after the onset of the critical word, and the topographical distribution of the main effect (Bottom Right, first topography; centro-parietal maximum) is highly similar to the difference observed when the critical word was in focus (Bottom Right, second topography) and when it was not (Bottom Right, third topography). Negative is plotted up; shaded regions in the waveforms indicate SEM; orange shaded rectangles indicate time windows corresponding to statistically significant effects; scalp topographies depict the mean amplitude over the time interval corresponding to the effects; The waveforms represent the average of the electrodes that contribute to the N400 effect identified in the cluster-based permutation statistics; black filled circles in the scalp plots indicate electrodes for a statistically significant effect.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Main effect of Congruency—Post-N400 time window. ERP waveforms of the congruent (C+; black) and incongruent (C−; red) conditions at the critical word (onset at 0 ms) for the main effect of Congruency (Top Left), and when the critical word was in focus (F+; Top Right) or not in focus (F−; Bottom Left). All waveforms diverge from around 835 ms to the end of the time window of interest. Negative is plotted up; shaded regions in the waveforms indicate SEM; orange shaded rectangles indicate time windows corresponding to statistically significant effects; teal shaded rectangles indicate time windows corresponding to marginal effects; scalp topographies depict the mean amplitude over the time interval corresponding to the effects; The waveforms represent the average of the electrodes that contribute to the effect in the cluster-based permutation statistics; black stars in the scalp plots indicate electrodes for a marginal effect—filled circles indicate electrodes for a statistically significant effect.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Main effect of Focus. ERP waveforms of the in focus (F+; green) and not in focus (F−; purple) conditions at the critical word (onset at 0 ms) for the main effect of Focus (Top Left), and when the critical word was semantically congruent with the preceding sentence context (C+; Top Right) or not (C−; Bottom Left). All waveforms diverge from around 285 to 690 ms after the onset of the critical word. Negative is plotted up; shaded regions in the waveforms indicate SEM; orange shaded rectangles indicate time windows corresponding to statistically significant effects; scalp topographies depict the mean amplitude over the time interval corresponding to the effects; The waveforms represent the average of the electrodes that contribute to the cluster identified in the cluster-based permutation statistics; black filled circles in the scalp plots indicate electrodes for a statistically significant effect.
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