Brain activity patterns suggest prosodic influences on syntactic parsing in the comprehension of spoken sentences

We address the question of how syntactic and prosodic factors interact duri ng the comprehension of spoken sentences. Previous studies using event-rela ted brain potential measures have revealed that syntactic phrase structure violations elicit an early left anterior negativity followed by a late post erior positivity (P600). We present recent experimental evidence showing th at prosodic information can modulate these components and thus the syntacti c processes they reflect. We conclude that the initiation of first-pass par sing processes is affected by the appropriateness of the prosodic realizati on of the preceding element.