processing events: behavioral and neuromagnetic correlates of aspectual coercion

Brain & Language 106 (2008) 132–143

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Brain & Language

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Processing events: Behavioral and neuromagnetic correlates of Aspectual Coercion

Jonathan Brennan a,*, Liina Pylkkänen a,b

a Department of Linguistics, New York University, 726 Broadway, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10003, USAb Department of Psychology, New York University, 6 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Accepted 25 April 2008Available online 17 June 2008

Keywords:Semantic compositionAspectual CoercionMEGAMF

0093-934X/$ - see front matter � 2008 Elsevier Inc. Adoi:10.1016/j.bandl.2008.04.003

* Corresponding author.E-mail address: [email protected] (J. Brennan)

a b s t r a c t

Much recent psycho- and neuro-linguistic work has aimed to elucidate the mechanisms by which sen-tence meanings are composed by investigating the processing of semantic mismatch. One controversialcase for theories of semantic composition is expressions such as the clown jumped for ten minutes, inwhich the aspectual properties of a punctual verb clash with those of a durative modifier. Such sentenceshave been proposed to involve a coercion operation which shifts the punctual meaning of the verb to aniterative one. However, processing studies addressing this hypothesis have yielded mixed results. In thisstudy, we tested four hypotheses of how aspectual mismatch is resolved with self-paced reading andmagnetoencephalography. Using a set of verbs normed for punctuality, we identified an immediatebehavioral cost of mismatch. The neural correlates of this processing were found to match effects in mid-line prefrontal regions previously implicated in the resolution of complement coercion. We also identifiedearlier effects in right-lateral frontal and temporal sites. We suggest that of the representational hypoth-eses currently in the literature, these data are most consistent with an account where aspectual mis-match initially involves the composition of an anomalous meaning that is later repaired via coercion.

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1. Introduction mismatch Aspectual Coercion, adopting terminology introduced

Humans’ ability to understand and produce previously unen-countered expressions tells us that semantic interpretation mustbe by and large compositional, that is, the meanings of expressionsare a function of their parts and the way the parts are syntacticallycombined. While the general idea of compositionality is largelyuncontroversial, the computational mechanisms by which it isachieved remain poorly understood for a number of constructions.One particularly controversial case involves expressions such asthe clown jumped for ten minutes, where there is no word whichencodes the information, obvious to any healthy native speaker, thatthe clown jumped several times (Talmy, 1978). In this work, we useda combination of behavioral and neuromagnetic measures to eluci-date the representation and processing of this type of expression.

At least four different hypotheses have been proposed about therepresentation of expressions such as the clown jumped for ten min-utes. One common approach is to introduce an unpronounced rule,corresponding to no overt syntactic element, which encodes therepetitive aspect of the verb’s meaning. The rule is invoked inresponse to the aspectual mismatch between the temporalmodifier for ten minutes, which describes duration of time, andthe verb jumped, which appears to describe a near-instantaneous,punctual event. Pustejovsky (1991) dubbed the resolution of this

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by Moens and Steedman (1988).The general idea of Aspectual Coercion can be implemented in

several ways. In some theories it is a semantic operation which ap-plies within the compositional system in order to resolvethe aspectual mismatch between the punctual verb and the durativeadverb (De Swart, 1998; Jackendoff, 1997; Pustejovsky, 1991,1995; Smith, 1991). In these theories the aspectual properties ofthe verb and the adverb are encoded in the lexical meanings ofthese elements in such as way that composition is impossiblewithout some type of meaning shift. This type of analysis can becontrasted with a pragmatic approach, where the verb and theadverb successfully compose in the semantics but create an ano-malous meaning (such as ‘the clown performed a ten-minute longjump’). This anomalous meaning is then shifted to a repetitivemeaning pragmatically (cf., Dölling, 1995, 1997, 2003a, 2003b).

A core property of both of these approaches is that the punctualmeaning of the verb is primitive and the iterative meaning derived.A third proposal of aspectual mismatch resolution has coercionapplying in the opposite direction. In this account, verbs such asjump are represented as repetitive activities which coerce into punc-tual events in punctual contexts (e.g., at 3 o’clock, the clown jumped)(Rothstein, 2004). We will call this approach Punctual Coercion, to bedistinguished from the approach described above, henceforth Itera-tive Coercion.

Finally, all of these three coercion theories contrast with an ap-proach that essentially denies the existence of Aspectual Coercionas any type of interpretive operation. Instead, verbs like jump are

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b

c

J. Brennan, L. Pylkkänen / Brain & Language 106 (2008) 132–143 133

semantically underspecified with respect to their duration: theyare equally capable of describing both punctual and durativeevents (Moens & Steedman, 1988). In other words, in this approachthere is no representational difference between verbs such as jumpand verbs such as run; whatever differences there are in the tem-poral properties of the events that these verbs describe plays norole in the linguistic representation of the verbs.

In this work, we used self-paced reading and magnetoencepha-lography (MEG) to investigate the processing of Aspectual Coercionin light of these four hypotheses. For clarity, the hypotheses and theirlogical relationships to each other are depicted in Fig. 1. A major divi-sion is drawn between Underspecification and Coercion, the latterfurther subdividing into Punctual Coercion and Iterative Coercion.Finally, Iterative Coercion splits into the semantic and pragmaticvarieties discussed above. Fig. 2 shows informal, and Appendix Amore formal, tree representations of same four hypotheses.

Several previous psycholinguistic studies have aimed to distin-guish between Underspecification and Iterative Coercion. Thesestudies have investigated whether expressions such as (1a), involv-ing a punctual verb and a durative adverb, are more costly to processthan expressions such as (1b), where both the verb and the adverbare durative (Husband, Beretta, & Stockall, 2006; Husband, Stockall,& Beretta, 2008; Pickering, McElree, Frisson, Chen, & Traxler, 2006;Piñango, Winnick, Ullah, & Zurif, 2006; Piñango, Zurif, & Jackendoff,1999; Todorova, Straub, Badecker, & Frank, 2000; see also Piñango,2003). Iterative Coercion predicts the mismatching (1a) to engenderlonger processing times than the aspectually matching (1b),whereas on Underspecification no such difference should be ob-served. The literature has thus far not directly addressed the possi-bility that coercion may, in fact, proceed in the opposite direction(Punctual Coercion; Rothstein, 2004), nor has there been anyattempt to separate semantic from pragmatic effects in interpretation.

1.

a

Fig.relat

a. Susan jumped until dawn.

1. Four hypotheses about the represionships to each other (see text).

(punctual verb, durative adverb)
b. Susan slept until dawn. (durative verb, durative adverb)
So far, the results on contrasts such as (1a) vs. (1b) are somewhatmixed. Piñango et al. (1999), (2006) have reported that reactiontimes in a secondary lexical decision task are increased for expres-sions involving punctual verbs and durative adverbs, consistentwith Iterative Coercion. In these experiments, subjects listened topairs of sentences such as those in (2). At the position in the sen-tence notated with an asterisk, a set of letters was flashed onto ascreen and the subject decided if they represented an English wordor not. Longer reaction times on the secondary task for the mis-match condition (2b), in comparison to controls (2a) were takento indicate added processing effort associated with coercion.

2.
. The man examined the little bundle of fur for a long time * tosee if it was alive.
. The man kicked the little bundle of fur for a long time * to seeif it was alive.

b

entation of aspectual mismatch and their

Todorova et al. (2000) replicated these results in a self-paced stop-making-sense task and further concluded, by presenting sentencetriples such as those in (3), that the cost is not associated with asimple delay associated with interpreting iterated events. Theadded control sentence, (3b), describes an iterated event withoutmismatch. Results showed longer reading times at the temporalmodifier in the coercion condition (3a) in comparison to the twocontrol conditions (3b and c). Lastly, Husband et al. (2006),(2008), using the same stimuli as Todorova et al., reported a repli-cation of these results using a moving-window self-paced readingparadigm.

3.
. Even though Howard sent a large check to his daughter formany years, she refused to accept his money.
. Even though Howard sent large checks to his daughter formany years, she refused to accept his money.

. Even though Howard sent a large check to his daughter lastyear, she refused to accept his money.

In contrast to the above findings, Pickering et al. (2006) found nocost associated with coercion in a series of four experiments inwhich subjects viewed the same stimuli used by Piñango et al.(1999) and Todorova et al. (2000). Pickering and colleagues usedself-paced reading and eye-tracking, which they argued to reflectmore natural reading than the previous dual-task paradigm(Piñango et al., 1999) or the stop-making-sense task (Todorovaet al., 2000). In two of the four experiments, the stimuli were al-tered such that the temporal modifier preceded the target verb. Thishad the advantage of placing the hypothetical burden of coercion onthe interpretation of a single word, the verb, rather than on a tem-poral modifier, which is a complex phrase. Pickering and colleaguestook the absence of effects to support the Underspecificationhypothesis of the representation of jump-type verbs and to showthat aspectual mismatch is not costly in natural reading.

In summary, while several studies suggest that aspectual mis-match is costly to process, consistent with the hypothesis thatthe interpretation of such sentences requires Iterative Coercion,conflicting results make it hard to draw firm conclusions. An addedchallenge for research in this area is that the notion of ‘‘punctual-ity” is quite difficult to define. Some punctual verbs describe eventsthat are short-lasting but naturally repeating. For example, mostknocking events involve multiple knocks. In contrast, a burpingevent is much more likely to involve only a single burp. It is quitepossible that our knowledge about the likelihood of event repeti-tion may shape our representations: perhaps knock is representedas a repeating activity and burp as a punctual point-action event.This possibility has not been taken into account in previousresearch, which may be a contributing factor to the currently some-what confusing psycholinguistic profile of aspectual mismatch.

In our research, we aimed to construct the strongest possibletest for Aspectual Coercion. In order to achieve this, a large numberof potentially punctual verbs were first rated for their likelihood ofdescribing single or repeating events. On the basis of this pretest,we constructed stimuli such as (4a and b), which involved eithera durative or a punctual adverb, followed by a (strongly) punctualtarget verb.

4. a
. Coercion: Throughout the day the student sneezed in theback of the classroom.
b
. Control: After twenty minutes the student sneezed in theback of the classroom.
Experiment 1 investigated the processing of these stimuli in self-paced reading. If the target verbs are underspecified with respectto event type (Moens & Steedman, 1988), the processing times of(4a) and (4b) should not differ. In contrast, if punctuality is specified

Fig. 2. Informal tree representations for the four hypotheses depicted in Fig. 1. (a) Verbs are semantically distinguished into different types depending on event type, and theaspectual mismatch is resolved by a semantic coercion operation (Jackendoff, 1997; Pustejovsky, 1995). (b) The compositional system successfully composes the punctualverb with the durative adverb, but the representation is anomalous. A second, pragmatic, stage of interpretation resolves the mismatch (Dölling, 2003a). (c) Verbs like jumpare represented as iterated events which can be coerced into punctual events in the appropriate context (Rothstein, 2004). (d) Verbs like jump are underspecified with respectto the duration of the events they describe and thus do not mismatch either with punctual or durative adverbs (Moens & Steedman, 1988).

134 J. Brennan, L. Pylkkänen / Brain & Language 106 (2008) 132–143

as a part of the verb’s meaning (e.g., Jackendoff, 1997; Pustejovsky,1995) and the mismatch is resolved by Iterative Coercion, thereshould be delayed reading times (RTs) at the verb in the coercioncondition. Finally, under Punctual Coercion, where the iteratedinterpretation is basic and the punctual interpretation derived,RTs should be delayed at the verb in the control condition.

In Experiment 2, we used MEG to investigate the neuromagnet-ic correlates of aspectual mismatch. We will outline potential can-didate regions associated with aspectual mismatch in theintroduction to Experiment 2, once we have established the behav-ioral processing profile of these expressions. Our main aim, how-ever, was to assess to what extent aspectual mismatch affectsthe anterior midline field (AMF), which has recently been reportedto be sensitive to so-called Complement Coercion (Pylkkänen &McElree, 2007). Complement Coercion refers to a meaning shiftthat occurs in expression such as the author began the book, wherethe entity-denoting noun phrase, the book, shifts to an event inter-pretation (e.g., reading or writing the book). So far ComplementCoercion is the only construction that has been reported to affectthe AMF, although only one previous study has explicitly investi-

gated the generality of the AMF effect. Harris, Pylkkänen, McElree,and Frisson (2007) tested so-called Concealed Question expres-sions, exemplified by sentences such as the announcer guessed thewinner, where the winner shifts to a question-like meaning (i.e.,‘who the winner was’). The AMF was not modulated by question-concealment, leaving open the possibility that the AMF effectmay be rather specific to Complement Coercion. Harris et al.(2007), however, speculated that the relevant contrast betweenComplement Coercion and Concealed Questions may be thatComplement Coercion is clearly meaning-adding, whereas thetype-shifting that occurs in Concealed Questions is of a morepurely logical nature. Abstracting away from the formal details ofthis, perhaps one way to make the contrast intuitive is by obser-ving that the noun phrase the winner describes a relationship be-tween an individual and a contest but does not name either theindividual or the contest. The question complement who the winnerwas includes a syntactic argument (who) standing for the (win-ning) individual, but like the noun phrase, it says nothing aboutthe identity of that individual. Thus, although the question comple-ment differs in semantic type from the noun phrase, it does not

Table 1Behavioral sensicality judgment data for Experiment 1

Coercion Control

% Sensical 93.6 88.9Mean response time (ms) 491 506


communicate more than the noun phrase by itself. In ComplementCoercion though, shifting from an entity to an activity involvingthat entity is a rather robust semantic change. Thus Harris et al.’ssuggestion was that the AMF may be modulated by shifts thatchange the semantic content and not simply the semantic type ofa constituent.

If aspectual mismatch is resolved by coercion, whether punctualor iterative, then the coercion operation should introduce addi-tional meaning concerning the nature of the event (see AppendixA). Consequently, if a change in meaning is what drove the AMF ef-fect of Complement Coercion, then aspectual mismatch should alsoaffect the AMF. Experiment 2 tested this prediction.

2. Experiment 1: self-paced reading

2.1. Methods

2.1.1. ParticipantsSixty right-handed native speakers of English participated in

the study (ages 18–35, 42 females).

2.1.2. StimuliAs discussed above, a large number of verbs were first normed

with respect to whether they were naturally interpreted asdescribing single or multiple events. Sixty-four subject–verb pairs(e.g., the clown jumped) were presented on a computer screen to 15right-handed native English speakers who did not participate inthe main reading time experiment. Participants were asked tojudge as to what degree the verb of a particular sentence most nat-urally describes a single event or multiple events. As an example,they were given the sentence the marine waved and wereinstructed that although ‘‘one can imagine what a single wavewould look like, the most natural interpretation of this sentencewould involve a succession of repeated waves.” With this instruc-tion, we aimed to assess to what extent the default interpretationsof particular subject–verb combinations were punctual, as opposedto iterative. Participants judged each sentence on a seven-pointscale where 1 corresponded to ‘‘single event”, and 7 correspondedto ‘‘multiple events”. Each sentence was presented in the middle ofthe screen immediately above the labeled seven-point scale;responses were entered using the computer keyboard. Twenty-six subject–verb pairs which received a mean judgment of lessthan three were chosen for our study (M = 1.78, SD = .54).

For the final stimuli, subject–verb pairs were combined with adurative modifier in the coercion condition and a punctual modi-fier in the control condition. Four of the verbs were repeated withdifferent subjects and temporal modifiers to ensure an adequatenumber of stimuli. Temporal modifiers were matched for ortho-graphic length (t(29) = .485, p = .63).

Following Pickering et al. (2006), the modifiers were presentedat the beginning of each sentence so that any potential cost of coer-cion could be assessed at a single word, i.e., the verb. This yielded30 sentence pairs like the example given in (4) above.

To ensure that the sentences were highly plausible, 33 subjectsrated the coerced and control sentences on a seven-point plausibilityscale (7 = highly plausible). Sentences were presented one by one ona computer screen and raters were instructed to indicate how‘‘natural” each seemed. The sentence pairs were mixed with an equalnumber of anomalous fillers (see below) to form triplets whichshared the same verb and sentence frames and were distributedacross three lists such that no subject saw more then one memberof a triplet. The three lists were randomized and each was presentedto 11 raters. Mean plausibility ratings were 5.02 (SD = .95) for thecoerced sentences and 5.03 (SD = .95) for the control sentences.Importantly, there was no statistical difference between theplausibility ratings for the two conditions (t(32) = .11, p = .9).

Sixty filler sentences were constructed using the same sentenceframes and temporal modifiers as in the target sentences butreplacing the verb with a durative predicate (e.g., walked). Thesefillers ensured that the presence of a durative modifier was notpredictive of aspectual mismatch. Sixty anomalous fillers were alsoconstructed which used the same sentence frames, adverbials, andverbs but included an inanimate sentential subject which was infe-licitous with the verb. In total, all 30 sentence frames were used sixtimes.

The thirty target pairs were combined with these 120 fillers(50% anomalous), along with 260 sentences from a separate exper-iment that were similar in syntactic structure (33% anomalous) and544 sentences from with a variety of different structures testingunrelated hypotheses (50% anomalous). The stimuli and fillerswere then distributed across six different lists in order to ensurethat no subject saw the same sentence frame more than once. Eachtarget item was seen by ten subjects.

2.1.3. ProcedureEach subject was seated in front of a Dell 1700 computer LCD.

Sentences were presented in a black courier font, size 18, on a lightgrey background using E-Prime software (PST Inc., PA). Subjectswere instructed to read at a natural pace such that they could an-swer whether the sentence made sense or not within 4 s at the endof each trial.

Twelve practice trials were presented prior to the beginning ofthe experiment to familiarize each subject with the task. Subjectswere required to achieve an 80% accuracy rate on the practice trialsin order to move on to the main experiment. Each trial began witha fixation cross presented in the middle of the screen. After 300 ms,a series of dashes corresponding to the words in the sentence ap-peared. Using the computer’s spacebar, subjects advanced word-by-word through each sentence at their own pace. After the finalword of each sentence, a question mark appeared and the subjectentered a judgment on the computer’s keypad as to whether thesentence made sense or not.

2.2. Results

Four subjects showing an overall accuracy rate of less than 80%were removed from the analysis. The data for the target sentenceswere cleaned first by removing all trials which were judged as non-sensical, eliminating approximately 7.7% of the data. Mean reactiontime and accuracy for the end-of-sentence sensicality judgmentsare shown in Table 1. There was no difference in reaction timebetween conditions, though judgments were marginally moreaccurate for coerced sentences than for controls (t(55) = 1.89, p < .1).

Reading times that were greater than three standard deviationsfrom each subject’s mean RT for a given phrase were removed asoutliers. According to this criterion, another 15% of the total num-ber of word-by-word reading times were removed from both con-ditions. Mean word-by-word reading times are shown in Fig. 3.

A regression equation was used to generate predicted readingtimes for each subject based on the length (in characters) of eachword and observed reading times were subtracted from estimatedreading times to create residual reading times (Ferreira & Clifton,1986). Residual reading times were not normally distributed, as as-sessed by the Shapiro–Wilk test for normality (W = .78, p < .001),and, accordingly, statistical comparison was carried out using a

Fig. 3. Moving-window self-paced reading time data for Experiment 1 (n = 56). Reading times in the coercion condition (solid line) were significantly slower at the verb thanin the control condition (dashed line). The asterisk indicates a significant difference in residual reading times by participants and by items following baseline correction (seetext).


non-parametric Wilcoxon signed-rank test using residual readingtimes that were averaged across participants (T1) and across items(T2). Planned comparisons were conducted comparing readingtimes on the verb and on the three words immediately following.

At the verb, coerced sentences were read more slowly (M =�37)than controls (M = �60) (T1 = 532, p < .05), though this differencewas not significant in the items analysis (T2 = 185, p = .34). Therewere no significant differences in the three words following theverb.

Visual inspection of the data suggested that control sentenceswere read more slowly than coercion sentences prior to the verb,potentially reflecting the different lexical material used in theadverbial modifiers. Further tests confirmed a significant differ-ence in RTs on the sentential subject such that coercion sentenceswere read faster than controls (T1 = 1073, p < .05; T2 = 380,p < .005). Turning to the three words of the sentence initial tempo-ral modifier, control modifiers were read marginally faster thancoercion modifiers at the second word (T1 = 969, p < .1; T2 = 315,p < .1) and the reading time difference at the first word reachedsignificance in the items, but not participants, analysis (T2 = 337,p < .05; T1 = 956, p = .12). Thus the effect of mismatch at the verbmay have been obscured in the items analysis by the oppositeeffect of the preceding durative modifier. To examine this, wenormalized the baseline between conditions by taking the averageresidual RT at the temporal modifier (i.e., the first three words) foreach condition and subtracting this value from the residual RT ofeach word in the sentence. With this correction, the differencebetween coerced verbs and control verbs was reliable both byparticipants (T1 = 1151, p < .005) and by items (T2 = 327, p = .05).

2.3. Discussion

Consistent with the predictions of Iterative Coercion, readingtimes revealed a processing cost on punctual verbs when theyappeared in a mismatching durative context. This is in line withthe findings of Piñango et al. (1999), (2006), Todorova et al.(2000), and Husband et al. (2006), (2008). The effect was obtainedeven though immediately prior to the verb, control sentences wereread more slowly than coerced sentences. Thus our findingssuggest that when verbs are normed to ensure that they describeda single event, aspectual mismatch is costly even in self-pacedreading, contra Pickering et al. (2006).

Concerning the reading time differences found on the temporalmodifiers, Zwaan (1996) observed that temporal modifiers which

shift a narrative in time (e.g., after an hour) are more difficult toprocess than modifiers that do not do so (e.g., after a moment).Though our sentences were presented in isolation and not as partsof longer narratives, a subset of punctual modifiers in the controlcondition could be associated with a narrative shift (e.g., aftertwenty minutes). Thus, the RT differences between the modifiersare consistent with Zwaan’s (1996) finding that narrative timeshifts engendered a processing cost.

In summary, our reading time data suggest that the interpreta-tion of punctual predicates in durative contexts is more difficult tocompute than such predicates in a punctual context. These results,thus, provide evidence that the aspectual representation of at leaststrongly punctual verbs is not underspecified and that their itera-tive readings are derived. In Experiment 2, we used MEG to eluci-date the neural bases of this process.

3. Experiment 2: MEG

What brain regions might plausibly show an effect of IterativeCoercion? Although there have not been previous functional imag-ing or EEG/MEG studies on aspectual mismatch, we identify threeprevious results that help narrow down the hypothesis space.

First, as already outlined in the introduction, the MEG correlatesof meaning shift have been previously investigated for a differentconstruction, so-called Complement Coercion (Pylkkänen & McEl-ree, 2007). Complement Coercion refers to a semantic type-shiftthat converts the meaning of an entity-denoting NP, such as thebook, to an event-meaning when the NP occurs as the complementof an event-selecting verb. For example, an expression such as theauthor began the book is intuitively interpreted as ‘the author begansome activity (e.g., reading or writing) involving the book’. Com-plement Coercion has been reported as behaviorally costly innumerous studies (McElree, Frisson, & Pickering, 2006; McElree,Pylkkänen, Pickering, & Traxler, 2006; McElree, Traxler, Pickering,Seely, & Jackendoff, 2001; Pickering, McElree, & Traxler, 2005;Traxler, McElree, Williams, & Pickering, 2005; Traxler, Pickering,& McElree, 2002). In an MEG study aimed at localizing the neuralgenerators of the coercion effect, Pylkkänen and McElree (2007)found that coerced sentences elicited increased activity in anMEG component dubbed the anterior midline field (AMF), gener-ated in ventromedial prefrontal regions at approximately 400 msafter the onset of the target noun book. Thus the AMF constitutesan obvious component of interest for the present study: an AMFeffect of Iterative Coercion would demonstrate that the AMF is


not only modulated by entity-to-event shifts in Complement Coer-cion, but also by more subtle shifts involving the temporal proper-ties of events. Further, as outlined in the Introduction, an AMFeffect of aspectual mismatch would conform to Harris et al.’s(2007) suggestion that the AMF might be sensitive only to mean-ing-changing shifts, and not to purely logical type-shifts.

A second prediction can be formulated on the basis of the prag-matic account of Iterative Coercion. If aspectual mismatch resolu-tion indeed involves two computational stages, i.e., an initialcomposition of an implausible meaning followed by a subsequentmeaning shift (Fig. 2b), an effect of anomaly detection should pre-cede any effect associated with shifting. In ERP studies, violationsof semantic plausibility classically elicit a negative-going deflec-tion peaking at around 400 ms, the so-called N400, as originally re-ported by Kutas and Hillyard (1980) and subsequently replicated innumerous studies. Unfortunately, however, evaluating whethercoercion elicits an N400-like effect is highly non-trivial, given thatthe N400 has been reported to involve a large number of genera-tors, spanning the temporal lobes bilaterally as well as various re-gions of the frontal lobes (Halgren et al., 2002; Helenius, Salmelin,Service, & Connolly, 1999; Maess, Herrmann, Hahne, Nakamura, &Friederici, 2006; Service, Helenius, Maury, & Salmelin, 2007). Nev-ertheless, we aimed to at least tentatively examine this predictionby conducting a comprehensive review of MEG localizations of theN400 in studies using techniques maximally similar to ours (seeSection 2.3.), in order to assess the extent to which our effectsoverlap with the areas implicated by these studies.

Finally, another potential region of interest is suggested by adeficit/lesion study by Piñango and Zurif (2001), who found thatleft posterior temporal damage correlated with problems in com-prehending Aspectual Coercion in a group of three Wernicke’saphasics. An MEG finding corroborating this result would suggestthat left temporal cortex indeed computes some part of AspectualCoercion, as opposed to simply providing input for the operation.

3.1. Methods

3.1.1. ParticipantsParticipants were 15 right-handed native speakers of English (8

female) ranging in age from 19 to 39. All were students or employ-ees at New York University.

3.1.2. StimuliTarget stimuli were the same as in Experiment 1. In addition to

the 30 coerced and 30 control sentences, an additional 120 sen-tences with a similar form were also presented (50% anomalous;see discussion of fillers in Experiment 1). We also included 240sentences of varying syntactic structures testing unrelated hypoth-eses (50% anomalous). Each of the subjects viewed all of the stim-uli. The materials were presented in a pseudorandom order suchthat the effect of repetition was counterbalanced across conditions.

3.1.3. ProcedureDuring the experiment, subjects lay in a dimly lit magnetically

shielded room and viewed the stimuli on fiberglass goggles (Avo-tec, FL), while neuromagnetic fields were recorded with a whole-head 148-chanel magnetometer (4-D Neuroimaging Magnes WH2500, San Diego CA), sampling at 678 Hz in a band between .1and 200 Hz.

Each trial began with a fixation cross presented in the middle ofthe screen. Subjects then initiated the presentation of each sen-tence themselves by pressing a button. Sentences were presentedword-by-word in white Courier font, size 90, against a black back-ground. Each word was presented for 300 ms with a 300 ms blankscreen between words. At the end of each sentence, a questionmark was displayed and the subject was instructed to judge

whether the sentence made sense or not within 4 s. Neuromagnet-ic fields were recorded from 300 ms before the presentation of thetarget verb to 1000 ms after.

3.1.4. MEG data analysisPrior to statistical analysis, trials with erroneous responses

were removed, and the data were cleaned of artifacts by rejectingtrials for which the difference between the minimum and maxi-mum amplitudes exceeded a threshold which varied between2500 and 3500 fT depending on the amplitude range of each sub-ject. MEG data from each subject were averaged by condition;approximately 90% of all trials were retained for each subject percondition. Data were then low-pass filtered at 40 Hz and a high-pass band filtered at 1 Hz.

In order to obtain a maximally simple initial evaluation of thecontribution of the AMF in aspectual mismatch resolution, theMEG data were first analyzed by using a spatial filter defined bythe mean localization and orientation of the AMF effect reportedby Pylkkänen and McElree (2007) for Complement Coercion. Theprediction was that if processing aspectual mismatch is associatedwith increased amplitude in the AMF source, the AMF spatial filtershould show an effect of aspectual mismatch. The AMF spatial fil-ter, a single equivalent current dipole, was placed in each subject’sdata using BESA 5.1 software (Megis, DE) with the location andorientation fixed (Talairach coordinates: x = �4.8, y = 36.8, z = �5;x-ori = �0.14, y-ori = 0.13, z-ori = 0.98).

As a second, more fine-grained, analysis, we carried out a dis-tributed source analysis using minimum norm estimates (MNEs;Hämäläinen & Ilmoniemi, 1984). Unlike discrete source models,MNEs require little user intervention, such as assumptions aboutthe number of sources involved in a solution. MNEs are also aresuitable for representing both focal and distributed sources (Uute-la, Hämäläinen, & Somersalo, 1999). Accordingly, MNEs allowed usto independently assess the spatial distribution of any activity dif-ferences identified with the spatial filter. The MNEs were calcu-lated in BESA 5.1., assuming a minimum L2-norm. 1426 regionalsources were evenly distributed at depths of approximately 10%and 30% below a smoothed standard brain surface. Regionalsources in MEG can be regarded as sources with two orthogonallyoriented dipoles in the same location, the RMS of each pair of di-poles providing the activation of the regional source. Pairs ofsources at different depths were then averaged to create 713non-directional sources for which activation could be comparedacross subjects and conditions.

Finally, we assessed the extent to which the effects obtained inthe source models were also observable in sensor-space. In order totest our hypothesis regarding the AMF, we calculated the RMS(root-mean-square) amplitudes of a region of anterior sensors.RMS analysis was also performed over a group of left temporal sen-sors as well as over a group of right temporal sensors.

3.2. Results

3.2.1. Behavioral dataData from the end-of-sentence sensicality judgments were ana-

lyzed for accuracy and response times; a summary is shown in Ta-ble 2. All subjects showed a high degree of accuracy. Importantly,coerced and control sentences did not differ in the degree to whichthey were judged as sensical. Response times were, however, sig-nificantly slower for coerced sentences, t(14) = 2.35, p < .05.

3.2.2. AMF spatial filterThe mean time-course of the single-dipole spatial filter for both

of the conditions across all subjects is shown in Fig. 4. Significantamplitude divergence between the waves was assessed with thecluster-mass statistic (Maris & Oostenveld, 2007) using the R

Table 2Behavioral sensicality judgment data for Experiment 2

Coercion Control

% Sensical 88.7 86Mean response time (ms) 560 494

Fig. 5. Areas showing reliably increased activity for the Coercion condition in thedistributed source analysis. Two distinct effects are revealed, an earlier right-lateralfrontal, anterior temporal and posterior temporal/cerebellar effect at 340–380 ms,and a later anterior midline effect at 440–460 ms.


statistical software package (R Development Core Team, 2006).First, pairwise t-tests were conducted for each time sample be-tween 0 and 600 ms after stimulus onset. Then, samples that dif-fered at p < .05 (uncorrected) were grouped into clustersaccording to temporal adjacency. This step yielded three distincttemporal clusters at 45–50 ms, 354–360 ms, and 448–459 ms poststimulus onset. Next, a ‘‘cluster-level” t-statistic was derived bysumming the absolute value of the t-statistics within each cluster.The last cluster showed the largest cluster-level t, and the probabil-ity distribution of this cluster’s t-statistic was determined using apermutation test in which conditions labels were shuffled andthe statistic was computed 10,000 times for this time window.The resulting distribution was used to determine the p-value ofthe cluster-level t-statistic associated with each of the three clus-ters. Only the final cluster (ranging between 448 and 459 ms)reached significance according to this procedure (Monte Carlop < .05, corrected). These results suggest that aspectual mismatchdoes lead to increased activity at the AMF.

3.2.3. Minimum norm estimatesThe minimum norm estimates allowed us to assess whether the

effect revealed by the spatial filter, in fact, localized into midlinefrontal regions. Models were constructed for each subject, and sta-tistical comparison proceeded by pairwise t-tests between eachsource at each time point from 300 to 500 ms post stimulus onset.For statistical reliability, we required at least 5 adjacent sources toshow a significant difference for a continuous period of 12 ms (8temporal samples), alpha = .05. Significant results from this com-parison are shown in Fig. 5 where regions showing greater activityin the coerced condition are plotted in red.

This analysis revealed two stages of reliably increased activityfor the coerced verbs. In the first stage, beginning approximately340 ms after verb onset, aspectually mismatching verbs elicitedincreased amplitudes in right-lateral middle frontal as well as inanterior and posterior temporal regions. The second effect, abouta hundred milliseconds later, localized in anterior midline regions.These results suggest that the AMF spatial filter used in our firstanalysis was an appropriate model for the later effect at 450 msbut not for the earlier one.

Fig. 4. Grandaveraged source waveforms for the AMF spatial filter applied to the MEG dgreater between 448 and 459 ms as assessed using the cluster-mass test (Maris & Ooste

3.2.4. Sensor-space RMSThe RMS analysis allowed us to determine the extent to which

the effects observed in the source models were also apparent insensor-space. The mean time-course of the RMS for both condi-tions in each of the three regions of interest is shown in Fig. 6.As with the AMF spatial filter analysis, significant divergence be-tween the waves was assessed using the cluster-mass statistic(Maris & Oostenveld, 2007). Pairwise t-tests were conducted foreach time sample between 300 and 500 ms for each quadrant.Within each quadrant, samples that differed at p < .05 (uncor-rected) were clustered according to temporal adjacency. This stepyielded two clusters across all regions with one at 435–452 ms inthe anterior quadrant, and one at 473–474 ms in the left-lateralquadrant. The frontal cluster showed the largest cluster-level t

ata of Experiment 2. Activity in the coerced condition (solid line) was significantlynveld, 2007).

Fig. 6. Grandaveraged RMS waveforms over sensors for three regions of interest (shown at bottom). Waves in the anterior quadrant, between 437 and 452 ms, evidencedsignificantly larger amplitudes in the Coercion condition (solid), as compared to Control (dotted), confirming that the effect at the AMF was apparent in sensor-space.


and the distribution of the statistic was determined using apermutation test with 10,000 iterations. The p-value of each ofthe two cluster-level t-statistics was determined in comparisonto this cluster’s distribution. Only the cluster in the anterior quad-rant (435–452 ms) reached significance (Monte Carlo p < .05,corrected).

The effect in the frontal quadrant between 400 and 500 msmatched the AMF effect in location and time-course identified inthe AMF spatial filter and Minimum norm analyses. However, theright hemisphere effect noted in the Minimum norm analysiswas not apparent in sensor-space.

3.3. Discussion

Experiment 2 investigated the neural correlates associated withprocessing aspectual mismatch. In particular, we tested whetheraspectual mismatch engages the AMF, which has been reportedas sensitive to meaning mismatch in Complement Coercion. Aspec-tual Coercion elicited an AMF effect suggesting a contribution ofthe AMF in semantic interpretation that goes beyond ComplementCoercion.

We also aimed to assess whether the neural correlates of coer-cion occurred in one or two stages. The AMF effect was preceded bya distributed right hemispheric effect beginning around 340 andlasting about 40 ms. In order to evaluate whether this earlier RH ef-fect might be associated with anomaly recognition, we investi-gated the degree to which this effect overlapped with previouslyreported generators of the N400 effect. Unfortunately, direct com-parison with activity elicited by our anomalous fillers was not pos-sible as they involved thematic violations (e.g., . . .the saucepansneezed. . .), which in recent electrophysiological studies have elic-ited P600 instead of N400-like effects (Hoeks, Stowe, & Doedens,

2004; Kuperberg, Caplan, Sitnikova, Eddy, & Holcomb, 2006;Kuperberg, Kreher, Sitnikova, Caplan, & Holcomb, 2007; Kuperberg,Sitnikova, Capland, & Holcomb, 2003; but cf. Kim & Osterhout,2005). Thus we compared our RH effect to previous MEG N400studies, instead.

MEG studies aiming to localize the N400 have used both dis-crete dipole modeling (Helenius et al., 1999; Service et al.,2007) as well as distributed source analysis (Halgren et al.,2002; Maess et al., 2006). Since our RH effect was obtainedvia distributed source analysis (and was clearly distributed),we limited our comparison to studies that were methodologi-cally parallel. In a classic auditory semantic anomaly paradigmwhere German sentences ended with a semantically implausiblefinal word (e.g., Die Melodi/Mülleimer wurde gepfiffen ‘The mel-ody/trash bin was whistled’), Maess et al. (2006) reported 6 re-gions of interest as showing significantly greater activity in theanomalous condition at 300–550 ms: bilateral inferior temporalgyri, the left superior temporal gyrus, Broca’s area left-laterally(BA 44/45) and the inferior frontal gyri (BA 47) bilaterally. Inthe visual modality, Halgren et al. (2002) employed a similarmanipulation and reported a widespread effect of anomaly inbilateral anterior temporal and orbital regions as well as inleft-lateral perisylvian, orbital, frontopolar, dorsolateral and pre-frontal areas. Fig. 7 plots the regions of activity reported inthese two studies. Effects found in both studies involve threeregions: the anterior temporal lobe bilaterally and left inferiorfrontal areas.

A comparison between our right-lateral effect and the N400-re-lated regions found by both Maess et al. (2006) and Halgren et al.(2002) indicated one common region: the right anterior temporallobe. Thus our RH effect did overlap with previously reportedanomaly effects, but only very partially.

Fig. 7. Brain regions sensitive to semantic anomaly, as reported by two MEG studies employing distributed source analysis. Data are plotted on an inflated average MR image.Results from Halgren et al. (2002) are shaded in blue, those form Maess et al. (2006) are shaded in orange and regions reported active in both studies are shaded in purple.


Finally, with respect to the previous aphasic study on AspectualCoercion by Piñango and Zurif (2001), our lack of left-lateral effectssuggests that their findings on Wernicke’s aphasics with posteriorleft-lateral lesions and problems in interpreting Aspectual Coercionshould not be taken as implicating a direct involvement of lefthemisphere regions in aspectual mismatch resolution. Rather,these areas may provide input for the operation. For example,the role of posterior left temporal regions in lexical access is ratheruncontroversial (e.g., Hickok & Poeppel, 2007; Salmelin, 2007).

4. General discussion

This research examined the processing of Aspectual Coercion,for which four distinct representational hypotheses have been pro-posed. Reading time results from Experiment 1 ruled out twohypotheses: underspecification, whereby verbs like jump are notspecified for event type, and Punctual Coercion, where the basicrepresentation of such verbs is iterative. Instead, our results wereconsistent with the predictions of Iterative Coercion, where verbslike jump are represented as punctual, with iterative interpreta-tions being derived either by semantic or pragmatic means. Thus,we found behavioral evidence that Aspectual Coercion does engen-der a processing cost, clarifying a controversy in previousliterature.

Experiment 2 aimed to localize the neural correlates of theprocessing cost. In particular, we were interested in assessingwhether the AMF, previously shown to be sensitive to Comple-ment Coercion, would also be modulated by Aspectual Coercion.We indeed obtained an effect in the AMF, suggesting that ven-tromedial prefrontal cortex participates in semantic interpreta-tion in a way that spans the two different constructions. Thus,we can reject the hypothesis that the AMF reflects processingunique to Complement Coercion. This of course still leaves openmany different interpretations of the AMF effect; for example,future studies will hopefully elucidate whether the AMF is in-volved in semantic composition in general or whether its func-tion is limited to meaning mismatch.

Interestingly, ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMF) has beenidentified as a network node in a recent MEG study investigatinglong-range connectivity between brain areas involved in the com-prehension of a written story (Kujala et al., 2007). Further, recentfMRI studies have shown the medial prefrontal cortex to be in-volved in processing coherent discourse (Ferstl & von Cramon,2001, 2002; Kuperberg, Lakshmanan, Caplan, & Holcomb, 2006).These findings are at least compatible with the hypothesis thatthe VMF plays some rather central role in language comprehen-sion, even though it does not figure in most extant neurocognitivemodels of language. Instead of language, the VMF has been impli-cated for many types of non-linguistic higher cognition, includingtheory-of-mind (Amodio & Frith, 2006; Gallagher & Frith, 2003;

Rowe, Bullock, Polkey, & Morris, 2001), emotion (Bechara, Dama-sio, & Damasio, 2000; Damasio, 1994), and decision making(Bechara et al., 2000; Fellows & Farah, 2007; see Wallis, 2007 fora recent review). Thus it is possible that the operations performedby the VMF in language processing are not computations unique tolanguage.

In addition to the contribution of the AMF in Aspectual Coer-cion, we also aimed to assess whether Aspectual Coercion engagesneural generators of the N400 response associated with semanticanomaly. This was of interest because pragmatic accounts ofAspectual Coercion would predict it to involve a stage of processingwhere an anomalous meaning is computed. Our AMF effect was in-deed preceded by a distributed right-lateral effect that partiallyoverlapped with previous MEG localizations of the N400. Thus,although our data cannot rule out hypotheses in which AspectualCoercion is resolved semantically in the type-system, our two-stage effect is most easily interpreted as reflecting a right-lateraldetection of anomaly which is followed by a prefrontal meaningshift.

5. Conclusion

In this research, we used a combination of behavioral andneuromagnetic measures to investigate different representationalhypotheses of aspectual mismatch. Our results suggest thataspectual mismatch elicits a processing cost, consistent with the-ories where the mismatch is resolved via some type of coercion.Our MEG data revealed that the mismatch is associated with in-creased amplitudes of the AMF, localized in ventromedial pre-frontal cortex. In combination with the previous finding thatthe AMF is affected by Complement Coercion, these data suggestthat the ventromedial prefrontal cortex participates in semanticinterpretation in some rather central, non-construction-specific,way.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National Science Founda-tion Grant BCS-0545186 and the New York University ChallengeFund Award (to L.P.). We also thank Martin Gevonden and GarrickYu for help in the materials creation and data collection of Exper-iment 1, Jesse Harris and Andrew Smart for assistance running sub-jects, and Rodolfo Llinás for generously allowing us to perform theMEG recordings in his facility.

Appendix A

A.1. Formal hypotheses

See Fig. 8.

Fig. 8. A formal representation of the four hypotheses sketched out in Fig. 2. In the lambda notation, d is a variable ranging over durative events, p a variable ranging overpunctual events, and e a variable ranging over eventualities in general. In (b), the subscripted terms stand for aspectual information that is part of world knowledge but notpart of the type-driven compositional system. For a basic introduction for to the typed lambda formula used here, see Pylkkänen and McElree (2006).


Appendix B

B.1. Stimuli

1. a. (coercion) All morning long the cart banged in the cramped
store aisle. b . (control) Just after ten the cart banged in the cramped storeaisle.
2. a
. For 45 seconds the computer beeped in the busy lab. b . After 45 seconds the computer beeped in the busy lab.
3. a
. For ten minutes the tailor belched on the empty sidewalk. b . At three o’clock the tailor belched on the empty sidewalk.
4. a
. Throughout the day the cannon blasted on top of the castle. b . At one o’clock the cannon blasted on top of the castle.
5. a
. For five minutes the fireman blinked in the dark stairwell. b . After a minute the fireman blinked in the dark stairwell.
6. a
. Throughout the morning the manager burped in the corneroffice. b . After a while the manager burped in the corner office.
7. a
. For ten minutes the professor called from the cluttered office. b . After an hour the professor called from the cluttered office.
8. a
. All day long the instructor coughed in front of the classroom. b . After several minutes the instructor coughed in front of theclassroom.
9. a
. Throughout the evening the princess curtseyed in front of theguests. b . At nine o’clock the princess curtseyed in front of the guests.
10. a
. All afternoon long the dog dived in the olympic-sized pool. b . Exactly at noon the dog dived in the olympic-sized pool.
11. a
. For several seconds the explorer fired beside the big bluelake. b . After a minute the explorer fired beside the big blue lake.


12. a
. For twenty minutes the father glanced out of the smallwindow. b . Right at midnight the father glanced out of the smallwindow.
13. a
. For many hours the janitor jumped in the empty hallway. b . At seven o’clock the janitor jumped in the empty hallway.
14. a
. For several minutes the acrobat leapt on the bouncytrampoline. b . Right at two the acrobat leapt on the bouncy trampoline.
15. a
. Throughout the day the student sneezed in the back of theclassroom. b . After twenty minutes the student sneezed in the back of theclassroom.
16. a
. During the morning the designer sniffed in the freshlypainted studio. b . Right at noon the designer sniffed in the freshly paintedstudio.
17. a
. All night long the elephant snorted in the grassy savannah. b . After five minutes the elephant snorted in the grassysavannah.
18. a
. All day long the alloy sparked atop the hot anvil. b . After ten minutes the alloy sparked atop the hot anvil.
19. a
. For an hour the mouse squeaked in the cramped living room. b . After four hours the mouse squeaked in the cramped livingroom.
20. a
. During the night the writer stumbled in the crowdedapartment. b . Right at midnight the writer stumbled in the crowdedapartment.
21. a
. For some time the mosquito stung over the muddyriverbank. b . After a moment the mosquito stung over the muddyriverbank.
22. a
. For several seconds the car swerved on the windymountaintop. b . After a minute the car swerved on the windy mountaintop.
23. a
. For thirty minutes the player swung in the practice cage. b . After thirty minutes the player swung in the practice cage.
24. a
. Throughout the afternoon the girl tripped in the snowy field. b . After an hour the girl tripped in the snowy field.
25. a
. All afternoon long the politician winked in front of theaudience. b . At the end the politician winked in front of the audience.
26. a
. For two hours the frog leapt across the shallow pond. b . After several seconds the frog leapt across the shallow pond.
27. a
. For fifteen minutes the performer jumped in the practicestudio. b . After two minutes the performer jumped in the practicestudio.
28. a
. For two minutes the lawyer glanced at the police officer. b . After fifteen minutes the lawyer glanced at the police officer.
29. a
. For twenty minutes the patient sneezed in the waiting room. b . After several moments the patient sneezed in the waitingroom.
30. a
. For a minute the toddler burped in the back seat. b . After one minutes the toddler burped in the back seat.
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