@inproceedings{877be95c7f78467cb1503d0c20ff756b,
title = "Word accents and phonological neighbourhood as predictive cues in spoken language comprehension",
abstract = "The present contribution summarises event-related potential (ERP) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) findings related to the processing of Swedish word accents in speech comprehension. It has previously been seen that word accents{"} either a low tone (accent 1) or a high tone (accent 2) on a word stem{"} can be used to pre-activate suffixes. Furthermore, it has been found that accent 1 seems to be a stronger {"}predictor{"} of upcoming suffixes as compared to accent 2. It has been proposed that accent 1 stems give rise to a pre-activation negativity (PRAN) brain potential, which is related to their high predictive weight as regards associated suffixes. We suggest that the processing differences between accent 1 and 2 stems can partly be explained by the difference in the number of word activations elicited by accent 1 and accent 2 word stems. This idea is tested by means of a regression analysis, which found that word stems in denser phonological neighbourhoods{"} i.e. which occur in more lexical items{"} elicit smaller PRAN effects. The results point to the importance of word accents in Swedish word comprehension.",
author = "Pelle Soderstrom and Merle Horne and Mikael Roll",
year = "2016",
doi = "10.21437/speechprosody.2016-10",
language = "English",
publisher = "Boston University",
pages = "45--48",
booktitle = "Speech Prosody 2016, May 31 - June 3, 2016, Boston, MA, USA",
note = "Speech Prosody ; Conference date: 31-05-2016",
}