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What Is Who Violating? A Reconsideration of Linguistic Violations in Light of Event-Related Brain Potentials

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Cognitive Electrophysiology

Abstract

It is often a worthwhile exercise to step back from one’s field of endeavor and to think in broad terms about what its proper goals are, or perhaps what they should be. It seems to us that the proper goals of event-related brain potential (ERP) research into language comprehension should at minimum include enquiries into the following questions:

  1. 1.

    How many independent factors contribute to our understanding of natural language?

  2. 2.

    What function relates all these factors to comprehension?

  3. 3.

    Are these factors specific to language, or do they cut across cognitive domains?

  4. 4.

    Which consequences of these factors can be consciously modified (e.g., stopped or gated), and which are not under conscious control?

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Kutas, M., Kluender, R. (1994). What Is Who Violating? A Reconsideration of Linguistic Violations in Light of Event-Related Brain Potentials. In: Heinze, HJ., Münte, T.F., Mangun, G.R. (eds) Cognitive Electrophysiology. Birkhäuser, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-0283-7_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-0283-7_8

  • Publisher Name: Birkhäuser, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-6693-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4612-0283-7

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