A study on prosody relation with syntactic processing in Persian language based on event-related potential technique

Background and Aim : In this study, considering the role of the three acoustic features of prosodic boundaries (pause, duration, and pitch) in the processing and perception of syntactic structures, the correlation of speech prosody to syntactic processing in Persian was investigated using the event-related brain potential technique (ERP).Methods : The brain signals of 12 men and 14 women (with an average age of 32) who were Persian-speaking university students were taken using 32 electrodes, while they listened to the test stimuli consisting of 333 sentences (two groups of declarative and conditional sentences spoken with natural speech, four groups of conditional sentences spoken with manipulated speech and three groups of filler sentences). The sentences were produced by a Persian-speaking female speaker and recorded by the PRAAT 6.0.56 software. The auditory stimuli were pseudo-randomly divided into three sections using Psychopy software then were played for subjects with a speaker. After performing the signal recording step and processing them using the Matlab software, the results were statistically analyzed by the 2019 version of the Minitab software.Results : The results indicate that the rate of the N400 component emergence in sentences in which all three prosody features were manipulated, was significantly different in the timing of this component in declarative sentences with natural speech. It should be mentioned that N400 in the N400-P600 pattern reflects a prosody-syntax mismatch effect. The Persian speakers also did not react to the change in the duration of the vowel in the last syllable of the first clause because the time of N400’s appearance in these sentences was exactly the same as the natural conditional sentences.Conclusion : Considering the time of the emergence of component P600 as representing the syntactic re-analysis of the sentences in which the pause was specially manipulated, it can be concluded that the subjects responded more quickly to the violation in this component of the speech prosody processing of the conditional sentences. The CPS component was also observed in the processing of the Persian sentences’ prosodic boundaries. The timing of the emergence of the CPS component in sentences with a manipulated fundamental frequency was closer to the timing of this component’s emergence on subjects brain signals in declarative sentences.

کلیدواژه ها:

Prosodic Features ، Syntactic Processing ، ERP Technique ، N400 ، P600 ، CPS