Prosodic pitch accents in language comprehension and production: ERP data and acoustic analyses

We used event-related potentials (ERPs) and acoustic analyses to investigate the processing of prosodic pitch accents as a function of their position in a sentence. Accents in sentence-medial positions were characterized by a higher fundamental frequency (F-o) and an increased duration. They elicited two different negative ERP components around 400 ms, depending on the predictability of the accent. When the accent was predictable, the negativity was fronto-laterally distributed and identified as the previously known Expectancy Negativity. Unpredictable accents elicited a more broadly distributed N400 with a central maximum, reflecting difficulties in semantic processing. For sentence-initial pitch accents, words had a higher F-o but of the same duration as sentence-initial words without pitch accents. These pitch accents elicited a P200 but no negativity ill a 400 ms time window. The P200 was modulated by the onset latency of the F-o peak rather than its magnitude. We discuss the possibility of a delayed processing of sentence-initial accents when the actual Occurrence of all F-o peak can be identified by comparing the F-o of the sentence-initial word to a reduced F-o of a word occurring later in the sentence.